Dayle Walters
03/11/12
Writ 101
Second Draft
Dead...Zone
3,300 square miles. Earth’s crust is 197 million square miles, so 3,300 is 1.6% of the Earth’s surface. That may not seem like much, but what can fit into 3,300 square miles? Rhode Island is 1214 square miles and Missoula fits into a mere 23 square miles. 3,300 is a massive amount of space and it’s a dead zone.
When you look at pictures of the dead zone from space it looks like thin yellow pieces of fat that line some of our coasts. A dead zone is very similar to the extra fat on our bodies, a place where excess nutrients wind up and are never used. A dead zone is comprised of everything from yard waste to agricultural fertilizers. One of the biggest dead zones is in the Gulf of Mexico. It is the second largest dead zone in the world, paled only in comparison to the one in the Baltic Sea, which is the size of Germany. The Gulf of Mexico’s dead zone gets all of its extra nutrients from the Mississippi river. The reason for the extravagant name, The Dead Zone, is that nothing can live there. The area has become hypoxic. “Hypoxia occurs when oxygen levels in seawater drop to dangerously low levels, and severe hypoxia can potentially result in the death fish and harm to marine life, thereby creating a ‘dead zone’ of life in that particular area.” (1)nitrogen and phosphorus are two of the main components to creating a dead zone these fertilizers accumulate in a body of water and cause algae to flourish into algal blooms “These blooms thrive on nitrates and phosphates and deplete the water of nearly all dissolved oxygen.” (2) The problem stems from the Mississippi river. “The Mississippi is the largest river in the United States, draining 40 percent of the land area of the country. It also accounts for almost 90 percent of the freshwater runoff into the Gulf of Mexico.” (1) Many problems together cause the Mississippi’s run off to become polluted, but one of the major components is agricultural techniques.
With such a mass amount of space that has become inhabitable by wild life I am surprised that so little has been done to stop this problem that we as a society are causing. There are so many things that we could be doing that start off time intensive and expensive but in the long run these certain methods will become less intrusive to the environment and cheaper to the businesses involved.
When looking for answers on how to change the state of the dead zone scientist turn to nature. “William Mitsch, professor of natural resources at Ohio State University [says,] ‘These solutions embrace ecotechnology, which includes restoring or building wetlands and riparian buffer zones along waterways.’” (2) So many thing develop around water. It makes thing easier on the communities around the river but by making it easier on ourselves we in turn make it more difficult for nature to take it natural corse.
“When water naturally spills over the banks, it can drain through a riparian corridor and come back as cleaner ground water.” (2) This is simple putting nature back and letting it fix our fertilizer happy culture.
This is one of the biggest ways to fix the dead zone but there are other small ways of restoring the natural order to things. When irrigating crops create a drip line system that brings the water directly to the plant and less chance of run off. Irrigating at night leads to more of the water being directly absorbed by the soil around the plants and less being evaporated by the sun, leading to less need to irrigate. Using natural fertilizers instead of constantly bringing in more nitrogen and phosphorus to feed plants will all help decrees run off. Crop rotation so that the soil does not become stressed. Bringing in crops that bring nutrients back into the soil, curtain bean plants have pods of bacteria that grow in their roots that being nutrients into the soil which leads to less need for artificial fertilizers.
These changes would help to protect the wild life that once flourished in the part of the Gulf of Mexico that is now the dead zone. Because of the displacement of these animals the impact does not only impact the natural eco-system but also the economy around the Gulf of Mexico the “Change in distribution of shrimp and fish pose a potential threat to the Gulf of Mexico's $4 billion a year seafood economy.” (3) The natural eco-system is in crisis although some creature are able to escape the eclipsing lack of oxogen “some bottom-dwelling creatures don't have the option of leaving the sea floor, making them the No. 1 casualty of dead zones. Certain worms, crustaceans and other animals choke as the oxygen is all sucked away by bacteria” (3).
It is hard for are culture to take responsibility for these sort of things. When an environmental problem comes up its usually a slow growing problem and does not show massive changes over night. Also it is hard to take responsibility for a problem that is at the other end of the Mississippi. The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is everyones problem. Even if it seems to far away to be important there are small dead zones popping up all over the world and the faster we figure out how to stop metastasizing the size of the ones we have, the sooner we can stop having them pop up.
Work Cited
Texas A&M University. "2011 Gulf of Mexico 'dead zone' could be biggest ever." ScienceDaily, 18 Jul. 2011. Web. 6 Mar. 2012.
The Ohio State University. “Potential Solutions for Gulf of Mexico’s “Dead Zone” Explored.” OSU Research News, Web. 17 Jun. 1998.
Mother Nature Network. “What is the Gulf of Mexico dead zone?” improve your world, Web. 24 May 2011.
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