Boosted By High Corn Acreage & Flooding, Gulf Dead Zone Likely To Equal Size Of New Jersey

[hatrack]

Increasing corn production is expected to spawn an oxygen-starved "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico larger than anything seen in 23 years of recordkeeping - an 8,800-square-mile area, roughly the size of New Jersey - researchers said yesterday. "It's had a disastrous effect on the fisheries for sure," said R. Eugene Turner, a research scientist with Louisiana State University.

An increase in corn production to manufacture ethanol-based fuels has jacked up the nutrients flowing down the Mississippi River to the gulf, where they deplete oxygen in the water, Turner said. More corn was planted in the United States last year - 94 million acres - than in any year since 1944, records show.

"We're planting an awful lot of corn and soybeans, and a lot of it isn't staying in the ground," he said yesterday at a news briefing sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which funds his research.

It has not been proved that higher corn production is expanding the seasonal dead zone, an area so depleted of oxygen that fish cannot survive in it. But Turner said all the evidence points in that direction. Heavy rainfall and floods may also contribute, he said.

EDIT

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation/bal-te.zones16jul16,0,7935679.story

[kestrel91316]

1. Wow, sounds like ANOTHER Mission Accomplished (TM). Corporate

America is really on a roll.