One World Essay: Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico
Scientific Reasoning:
The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is a human problem, like most other disasters. What this means is that once the place thrived and was ecologically balanced, but we tipped the balance slightly and wrecked havoc upon the environment. It has been noted to occur since the 1950’s and is ongoing. The reason that this dead zone occurs is because of a phenomenon known as eutrophication. Eutrophication is when there is an excessive amount of nutrients in a body of water and it causes an abundance of plants to grow. In this case the nearby farms had been using nitrogen in their fertilizers. The nitrogen got carried into the ocean through rain and other forms of water. Nitrogen is an important aspect for plants to grow and a lack of it is normally what contains plants from growing in an excessive amount. Because farmers mainly use this, the dead zone has a considerable decrease in size in the winter season while it increases in size during the warm seasons. Eutrophication generally leads to another phenomenon know as hypoxia, which is the state of water when it is lacking oxygen. Having too much nitrogen leads to hypoxia, because there is a bloom in algae. Bacteria in the water then eat the algae and use all the oxygen in the process. Without oxygen in the water, a dead zone is formed, an area with little to no life. The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is around 6,000-7,000 square miles in size, but varies throughout seasons (source23879482371) (see Fig. 1).
Fig. 1 Size of Dead Zone
Environmental problems with this are that a huge marine ecosystem has been devastated. Hundreds upon thousands of marine life have been killed, along with the destruction...
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...come too big for anyone to do anything about it.
Solutions
So far the solutions that people and scientists have come up with are to make the farmers use fewer fertilizers, time when you use your fertilizers and control waste. Using fewer fertilizers and controlling waste are the most obvious solutions, as they would directly prevent nitrogen and nitrates from being in the water. They are the hardest to achieve though because the farmers need them to grow their plants. The other thing is to time when you use your fertilizers. This is so that you don’t add too much fertilizer in the rainy seasons because then the water will run down and go into the Gulf of Mexico.
Bibliography:
Bruckner, Monica. "The Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone." The Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Nov. 2013. .
According to the USDA Economic Research Service, the most cost-effective solution would be to simply decrease the amount of nitrate entering the gulf by 1.2 million metric tons. According to calculations, this would not result in significant crop yields but would decrease the amount of hypoxia.
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International Aral Sea Rehabilitation Fund web site. http://ifas-almaty.kz/ENG/Consequences.html 5.
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