Earth Watch: Like it or not, corn is here to stay By Dennis KeeneyFriday, August 14, 2009 11:06 PM CDT, Ames Tribune > NewsDrive (or bike) out of Ames in any direction during the summer, and you see field corn (not sweet corn), interspersed with soybeans. This year has been good for corn; it stands [...]
Record Corn Crop Spells More Trouble for Gulf of Mexico Fisheries By Robert Howarth, Professor of Biology at Cornell UniversityAugust 19, 2009 02:14 PM , Huffington PostIn America we grow a lot of corn, more than any other country. Last week, the USDA announced that 87 million corn acres -- the second highest amount ever [...]
The Bay is ripe for massive fish kill By Peter B. Lord, Journal Environment Writer 01:00 AM EDT on Wednesday, August 19, 2009, The Providence Journal Conditions in Narragansett Bay have reached a perfect storm of high temperatures, low dissolved oxygen and slack tides that could trigger another massive fish kill like the one six [...]
Quality of water off Irish coast improves Irish Times By LORNA SIGGINS, Marine Correspondent August 19, 2009WATER QUALITY in Irish coastal areas and estuaries is showing significant improvement, according to a British scientific journal. A report for the Marine Pollution Bulletin by three scientists attached to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says that dissolved oxygen [...]
Environmental groups laud EPA setting limits for nutrient runoff polluting Florida waters By MITCH STACY, Associated Press WriterAugust 21, 2009 1:13 p.m.CLEARWATER, Fla. (AP) — Environmental groups on Friday lauded long-awaited action by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to set legal limits for farm and urban runoff polluting Florida's waterways, limits that could serve as [...]
USDA Eyeing Targeted Program To Reduce Gulf Of Mexico 'Dead Zone' By Daily NewsFriday, August 21, 2009, InsideEPA.comThe Agriculture Department (USDA) is planning to target funds to encourage farmers in states bordering the Mississippi River to use best management practices to reduce nutrient runoff contributing to the Gulf of Mexico’s so-called dead zone, according to [...]
Toxic Algae Contaminates U.S. Water By ShellyTAug 9th, 2009, A World of Progress, Feature Algae in Big Stone Lake This is a photo I took of Big Stone Lake in Minnesota the last week of July. On the day I arrived at the campground there, the algae was floating in the water, and four days [...]
EPA's "Dead Zone" Strategy Bothers Iowa Farm Groups By Compiled by staff Aug 14, 2009, Wallaces Farmer The "hypoxia zone" in the Gulf of Mexico is significantly smaller this year than scientists predicted it would be, and conservation efforts by farmers upstream in states like Iowa and Illinois are a key reason, say officials with [...]
Blue Legacy - Louisiana: Downstream dead zone By Blue Legacy's Expedition: Blue PlanetSunday, April 26, 2009Wilma Subra, southern Louisiana’s own activist-grandmother extraordinaire, was one of the first people to identify the Dead Zone. A chemist, she’d been conducting tests off of oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico when she noticed a strange dearth of [...]
Entrepreneurs Wade Into the 'Dead Nature Zone' By RUSSELL GOLDAugust 12, 2009, Wall Street JournalEvery spring, fertilizer runoff from the U.S. Mississippi River floods into the Gulf of Mexico, causing a massive algae bloom that leads to a giant oxygen-deprived "dead zone" where fish can't survive. Now, this annual problem is getting new attention, not [...]
