Mississippi River floods may bring biggest dead zone

The flood waters racing down the Mississippi River are forecast to create the largest low-oxygen dead zone on record, according to government and university scientists.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts the deadly low-oxygen waters to spread across an expanse of the Gulf of Mexico seafloor equivalent to the geographical size of New Hampshire. To date, the largest low-oxygen, or hypoxia, zone in the gulf came in 2002, sprawling across 8,400 square miles.

Such dead zones are a marine reaction to the nutrient-enriched runoff from fertilized farm fields, animal feed lots and even city sewage systems. These low-oxygen waters can kill fish, shrimp and other marine life that get trapped or fail to swim or scuttle away.

Photos: Mississippi River flooding wreaks havoc in the South

The culprit in many marine die-offs is usually decaying microorganisms. Although the oceans are awash in algae, riotous blooms occur in the spring when waters are supercharged by nutrients, particularly nitrogen and phosphorous. The algae die and sink to the bottom. Then bacteria take over, breaking down the plant matter and sucking the oxygen out of seawater. That leaves little or none for fish or other marine life.

Hundreds of dead zones have been identified all over the world. Robert Diaz, a professor at Virginia Institute of Marine Science, has reported to Congress and the White House that nearly half of U.S. bays, estuaries and other waterways surveyed have suffered from life-choking, low-oxygen waters.

Scientists expect dead zones to expand with changing landscapes and surging flood waters, such as this spring's record-setting deluge in the Mississippi basin. Although scientists are careful not to link any specific flood to climate change, they agree that extreme weather events are likely to become more common as the planet warms.

Whether this spring's polluted runoff will create a dead zone for the record books will be confirmed when scientists, organized by Nancy Rabalais, director of Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, complete underwater surveys in late July and early August.

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-- Kenneth R. Weiss

Chart on top: The annual measurements of the size of the Gulf of Mexico's hypoxia zone and the 2011 forecast. The dark gray represents the range of forecasts.

Credit: Nancy Rabalais/Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Comments

[Pippin]

Bring back the swamps. Stop using poisons and any chemicals on our land. Stop the GMO's and GE's. Get back to rotating crops and stop paying people to not grow anything. Stop oil companies from dumping. This is a man made disaster, many decades in the making. This is greed gone rampant, and it will get worse before it gets better. And it will only get better if we make it happen. Call, write, text, email, whatever you can do; let ALL the politicians know this is wrong. We need to stop killing our earth before we kill everything that lives here, including ourselves.

[Happy Cajun]

True story,I was there in 1973,the year of the last "big flood".On a levee job in the Atchafalaya spillway.We dug dirt for a month,while the Corp of Engineers inspector layed up with a case of whiskey and a couple of local "very friendly ladies".On inspection day he sobered up ,got into a bateau,and sat there while we dumped dirt in one place until the sounding showed there was enough dirt to meet required specifications.That was the only time I ever saw him on the job.That was business as usual back then,I wonder why New Orleans flooded when Katrina hit.The truth is bad enough I do not have to lie,draw your own conclusions.

[Nicolas Theodore Duplessis]

@nomad

None of you left leaning, idiots who fall for all of this Obama and environmental mess know anything. Obama has been 100 times worse than any other President on the environment and his appointments have been absurd.

What proof was there that these towns were going to flood before the US Army Corp, under the leadership of this President, went around and not only blew up levees but like BP-they added chemicals into the water, creating the dead zones, so that the Gulf can become one big dead zone.

You people have IQ's of goldfish. Left wing environmentalist are the WORSE when it comes to corruption, just like the head of the Sierra Club, isnt even in Ca. State but sitting down in Texas with Big Oil and working out plans on how to play both sides of the PR Game, while they advance a monopoly on this energy field.

There is no such thing as green energy, it is a fraud because everything that has been suggested by Obama and Democrats always includes the expanding of off shore oil drilling. And Ca. will see this when Kamla Harris and Steve Cooley along with Nunez, hand over this state to Chevron.

[Nicolas Theodore Duplessis]

I know when the US Army Corp was created idiot!
I would know being from New Orleans and being around when they caused the Katrina Flooding under Bush, due to Bush appointing a horse trainer to head it and like Bush was the cause for created a bad leadership head of the Corp, Obama is also placing bad and corrupt idiots into the heads of the US Army Corp and MMS.
That is what I meant by Obama's creations being that each President has a chance to place in good leadership or corruption and Obama chose corruption-so grow a brain being that I didnt know I was writing for a 5th grader!

[nomad]

@ Nicolas Theodore Duplessis

The Army Corps of Engineers was created in 1802, a little before Obama's time.. It makes every thing else you say moot.

http://www.usace.army.mil/History/Documents/Brief/index.html

[Nicolas Theodore Duplessis]

We also have deformed fish in the Gulf and the dead zones have very very little to do with the run off from the Northern Mississippi River farm lands and even if they did, it was the U.S. Army Corp(Obama's creation) aka Federal Gov Agency that started blowing up the levees and making the floods.

What is causing these dead zones, as an owner of 20 acres of seafood farms in La. State, is this idiotic President Obama and his corrupt token-ism for Big Oil Companies (BP Exxon Chevron and Texaco) that are mostly owned by the Queen of England and this other dumb Democrat and head of that joke, M.M.S., which keeps issuing dangerous permits to these off shore oil companies.

Even the Democratic supposedly Green Energy Bill aka Cap and Trade was a shame that was written by B.P. and given to Senator Joe Liberman and Senator John Kerry, both Democrats and both stock holders in BP, to expand off shore oil drilling off of Fl, the Atlantic Ocean and even in Alaska with Ca. State being in the cross hairs.

The environmental agencies have done nothing but take bribe money from oil companies, like The Seirra Club, to distract people with stupid deflections like trees, while Obama and Oil Companies pollute this entire planet.

[Robert NO longer in LA]

So glad we don't eat crap from the Gulf....but all that 'stuff' is fungible, meaning it can be sold to Mexicans, relabeled and sold as PURE !

[happy cajun]

Big deal,it's out there every year.This year it will just be bigger.It get's bigger every year anyway.Oil companies can dump all their drilling waste they want to in our three mile territorial boundary.Our DEQ gives them permits to do so.Federal judge denies the permits,DEQ changes rules issues new permits.Governor Jindal raises more millions to run again this year unopposed,so far.Corporations contribute another $250,000 to his wife's nonprofit foundation.Life is good,when you are the kingfish.Let the good times roll.