Green Options » Gulf of Mexico

Hurricane Dolly versus Gulf’s Dead Zone

Joshua S Hill — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 18:17:19 +0000

The dead zone that grows and shrinks in the Gulf of Mexico, at the outlet of the Mississippi River, has long been on my radar. Hurricanes too, have long been on my agenda, for fear that global warming is increasing their intensity and frequency. However I never thought that I would report on both in the same article, especially in this way.

According to Nancy Rabalais, head of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, the recent hurricane that swept through the Gulf of Mexico, Hurricane Dolly, managed to keep in check the growth of the dead zone.

“If it were not for Hurricane Dolly, the size of the Dead Zone would have been substantially larger,” she said in a news release sent from the consortium’s research vessel, the Pelica, as it returned from its annual mapping cruise, carrying Rabalais out at the same time each year to measure the area.

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Baltic Sea “Dying” from Lack of Oxygen

Max Lindberg — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 21:25:54 +0000

It’s not only the Gulf of Mexico that’s suffering from “dead zones” caused by excess nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorus used as fertilizers.

Marine dead zones are spreading in the Baltic sea, and that could cause the entire ecosystem to collapse for lack of oxygen. Dire warnings from Lasse Gustavsson, Swedish head of the World Wildlife Funds branch in Sweden.

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Floodwaters to Increase Mexican Gulf Dead Zone

Joshua S Hill — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 16:51:04 +0000

If you have visited Planet Save for any length of time you will no doubt have seen me talk about the increasing amount of ‘dead zones’ cropping up across our planets watery surface. In particular, the Gulf of Mexico is home to what is believed to be the largest dead zone in the world: an area larger than Rhode Island that is almost totally devoid of oxygen in the water.

This particular dead zone has formed, in part, thanks to farm runoff that has made its way down the Mississippi River, all the way from Iowa and Wisconsin. Chemicals used on the farms are washed in to local waterways, which all eventually end in the Mississippi which thus makes its way down and out past New Orleans in to the Gulf of Mexico.

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2008 Atlantic Hurricane Season Predictions

Joshua S Hill — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 16:41:07 +0000

Each year researchers at North Carolina State University predict the oncoming hurricane season. With summer just around the corner for the Northern Hemisphere, their latest report is out, and it’s billing an active year for the Atlantic.

However, thankfully for those coastal cities on the Atlantic, the number of storms making landfall will stick close to the average.

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Is Ethanol Production Fueling the Size of the Dead Zone?

Benjamin Jones — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 14:05:35 +0000

Photo Source: marinebiology.edu

In case you didn’t know, the “dead zone” isn’t just a novel by Steven King or an old TV show, it’s an area about the size of New Jersey in the Gulf of Mexico that during the summer months is incapable of supporting sea life. The dead zone is created when fertilizer run off promote algae growth, which in turn throws off the oceans equilibrium by using all the available oxygen, killing everything else. So, good for algae perhaps, but bad for the sea life in general.

Carectomy recently reported that ethanol production for passenger vehicles could be responsible for a growth in this dead zone. In their words:

Corn is the biggest culprit in creating these environments, and now that the U.S. is looking to biofuels as a solution to its energy needs, the problem’s only getting worse. Bush signed legislation at the end of 2007 that will triple the amount of corn ethanol produced over the next several years.

More after the jump!

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Ethanol Incentives Contribute to Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone

Clayton B. Cornell — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 13:41:14 +0000

It looks like ethanol subsidies may impede efforts to reduce the size of the Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico. A draft report from the EPA Science Advisory Board says that ethanol subsidies could lead to a dramatic increase in nutrient loading in the Mississippi river basin, due to diverting cropland to corn production.

Recent energy policies, combined with pre-existing crop subsidies, tax policies, global market conditions and trade barriers all provide economic incentives for conversion of retired and other cropland to corn production for use in ethanol production. Such conversions could lead to corn production on an additional 16 million acres…

The Dead Zone, an area in which there isn’t enough dissolved oxygen to support aquatic life, has been measured in the Gulf of Mexico since 1985. It’s caused by agricultural runoff overenriching the waters at the end of the Mississippi River - the downstream effect of millions of acres of intensely fertilized crops. Nitrogen and phosphorous, intended for corn but ending up in the river, make their way to the Gulf causing excessive phytoplankton production. In the process, all available oxygen is used up (hypoxia), and marine life has to move out or suffocate.

It turns out that the greater Mississippi-Atchafalaya River Basin (MARB) drains a grand total of 40% of the contiguous United States. The cumulative effect of all this runnoff creates a Dead Zone approximatly 20,500 sq. km. - roughly the size of the state of New Jersey.

To address this issue, the Science Advisory board recommends a 45% reduction in nitrogen and phosphorous fluxes from farmland. Unfortunately, recent trends pushing corn-based biofuels are not exactly aligned with this strategy:

Certain aspects of the nation’s current agricultural and energy policies are at odds with the goals of hypoxia reduction and improving water quality. . .[A]n emerging national strategy on renewable fuels has granted economic incentives to corn-based ethanol production.

Without some change to the current structure of economic incentives favoring corn-based ethanol, N[itrogen] loadings to the MARB from increased corn production could increase dramatically in coming years, rather than decreasing, as needed…

The alternative is cellulosic ethanol and avoiding corn-based fuels altogether:

Alternatively, the use of perennial crops and other feedstocks for cellulosic ethanol requires a more complex refining process that produces more net energy and results in lower fertilization and thus less nutrient runoff than corn-based ethanol.

The Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico is a symptom our farming practices, and converting cropland to grow fuel will only exacerbate the problem. This is just another chapter in the corn-based ethanol saga. The EPA’s Science Advisory Board will vote on approval of the draft report in December.

Green Car Congress: EPA Science Advisory Board Suggests Revisions to Ethanol Incentives Necessary to Reduce Gulf of Mexico “Dead Zone”
Science Advisory Board (SAB) Hypoxia Panel Draft Advisory Report

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