August 2, 2012, 7:21 am
Big Drought Makes for a Small ?Dead Zone?
By KELLY SLIVKA
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.,,
