In yet another display of the inexorable interdependence of
Earth’s ecosystems, a bad summer for Midwestern farmland has
turned out to be a good one for life in the Gulf of Mexico.
Researchers from the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium
have found that this summer’s hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico
– the oxygen-devoid area of water colloquially known as the dead
zone – covers one of the smallest areas recorded since
scientists began measuring the hypoxic zone in 1985. According
to researchers who study hypoxia in the gulf, extra-dry weather
in the corn belt is responsible for the small size of the
hypoxic zone, which measures a little under 3,000 square miles –
roughly two times the size of Long Island. “Because of the
massive drought in the Midwest, there’s a whole lot less
fertilizer being flushed into the rivers and whole lot less
water being flushed into the gulf,” said Don Scavia, an aquatic
ecologist with the University of Michigan. Dr. Scavia has been
using data about nitrate levels in the Miss