A critical new report release today by a joint effort US environmental and scientific federal agencies traces an increase of hypoxia, known as dead zones, in US waters. Over 300 U.S. coastal water bodies now experience stressful or lethal oxygen levels, threatening commercial and recreational fisheries.
Nearly 50 percent of the 647 waterways assessed for the new report, including the Gulf of Mexico, home to one of the largest such zones in the world. (Note- Research for this report was completed before the BP spill.)
“The Nation’s coastal waters are vital to our quality of life, our culture, and the economy. Therefore, it is imperative that we move forward to better understand and prevent hypoxic events, which threaten all our coasts,” wrote Nancy H. Sutley, chair of the Council on Environmental Quality, and John P. Holdren, Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, in a letter accompanying the 163-page report, Scientific Assessment of Hypoxia in U.S. Coastal Waters, which was delivered today to Congressional leaders.
The report cites the commercialization of farming practices over the past 50 years with tile drainage systems that allows farmers to control subsurface water levels has benefitted U.S. agriculture through increased yields, but has negatively affected water quality by speeding water and its solutes—such as nitrogen, phosphorus, pesticides and sediment—into streams and rivers without allowing natural elimination processes to occur.
Read more about the research and the report here.
Source: NOAA
Ocean Science & Technology
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Scientific Assessment of Hypoxia in U.S. Coastal Waters
The report is the final of five reports mandated by Congress in the Harmful Algal Bloom and Hypoxia Amendments Act of 2004 and is available online at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ostp/nstc/oceans
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