Politics' Involvement with Dead Zones

The algae bloom in Lake Erie in 2011 that according to the NOAA was the worst in decades.

There are many ways in which politics is involved with dead zones. Dead zones are considered an environmental issue and issues like this are brought up to certain politicians whom are expected to take action to try and solve them. Lake Erie is one of the many areas with this problem. In January of 2015, there was an article published on the reducing phosphorus levels in the lake. Fertilizer runoff was labeled as one of the contributors but there were others that were even more dramatic such as drought and low flows from tributaries and streams.

Because of the reducing phosphorus levels and other findings, it was suggested that policymakers have been working on plans in order to combat the dead zones in Lake Erie. Anna Michalak was the one who led this study and also mentioned that they should look at the meteorological changes as well as an agricultural management practice. What she is saying is that there is only so much people can control with this problem. There are many potential causes to dead zones, but we cannot control every single one of them. The types of causes that we can control are ones that include the runoff and what is coming from the runoff into bodies of water such as Lake Erie. Ones that are not in our control are natural causes such as increasing water temperature from climate change.

Raj Bejankiwar of the International Joint Commission, a U.S. - Canadian Agency, said, “Only a few things are in our control, and how much phosphorus comes into the lake is one of them.” This Agency made a move in 2014 that called for cutting phosphorus runoff by nearly half over three to six years. This was an important move since Lake Erie produces the fish that people eat most. If these dead zones overtake the fish, then there will be no more fish or other types of seafood for people to eat. That is a big step in the right direction and more calls like this need to be made for larger dead zones such as the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. 

Flesher, John. (2015). Lake Erie 'Dead Zones' Influenced by Weather, Scientists Report. HuffPost. Retrieved on May 1, 2015 at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/06/lake-erie-dead-zones_n_6424598.html 

Peer Review of Dead Zones

When I was looking at peer reviewed articles for my papers this year, there were several ones about dead zones. I was surprised to see that there were not as many as I thought there would be. Many of them were from before 2005 so research on dead zones has been looked at for numerous amounts of years. The peer reviewed article I chose to write about is by Andrew H. Altieri and Keryn B. Gedan and is called Climate Change and Dead Zones. It was published in 2015 and actually the only article I saw that was published in the current year. This article is one of the few I found that was about how climate change is a factor contributing to dead zones. The majority of the ones I found focused more on what we do such as fossil fuels and the nitrates and phosphates that accumulate due to over fertilization from farms.

One point that Alteiri and Gedan make in this article is that 94% of dead zones are located in regions that will have a 2° C temperature increase by the end of the century. They have also found evidence that climate variables such as temperature, ocean acidification, and precipitation will affect dead zones and that each of these factors including others have the ability to act on the oxygen availability along with the ecological responses to hypoxia. This statement suggests that these factors work together to exacerbate dead zones along with the obvious causes such as eutrophication.

One thing I thought was really interesting in this article was a chart that shows the physical and biological effects and their specified climate drivers (you can see it by going to the actual article). For example, one of the climate drivers was sea level rise and the physical effect was stratification, nutrient loading, and the volume of hypoxic water. For the biological effects, it included wetland filtration of nutrients. These effects are the related effects of dead zones and helps drive their point mentioned earlier that the climate variables all contribute in some way to dad zones.

They also showed a model on the temperature effects on hypoxia impacts. On one side it showed the drivers such as nutrients and microbial decomposition and their effects with higher temperatures. On the other side it showed the responses such as physiological stress and tolerance. What helped the most was for each driver and response it had an explanation of how it is affected with higher temperatures and I think it was an important piece of information to put in the article.

This article really pinpoints the natural causes of dead zones and makes the general public aware of their effects on dead zones. The pictures and diagrams really helped, even for me being a biology major.

Altieri, A. H. and Gedan, K. B. (2015). Climate change and dead zones. Global Change Biology,

            21: 1395–1406. doi: 10.1111/gcb.12754. 

Pictures received from http://www.vims.edu/research/topics/_images/do_climate_change.jpg and 

https://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_1484w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/11/10/Health-Environment-Science/Graphics/w-DeadZones.jpg?uuid=1YyxRmiJEeS6_WWYGSpEjQ 

Researchers in the Field of Biology

There are many researchers and scholars in the field of biology. Research is the heart of biology and is what most biologists do in one way or another. One researcher I was interested in was Esther Angert. She is a biology researcher who focuses mainly on microbiology but has other interests that included bacteriology, developmental biology, and molecular biology. Angert went to Indiana University where she received a B.S. in Biology. She had been in the laboratory training under Dr. Norman Pace where she then earned her Ph.D.  

Most currently, Angert and other colleagues developed an undergraduate course in microbiology specifically for non-science majors. In her research, she focuses on Epulopiscium which are some of the largest known bacteria and intestinal symbionts which can get up to about 0.6 mm in length. This organism is a great model for showing the general concepts of microbial biology. They are intestinal symbionts of a specific species in tropical marine fish and are able to provide a deeper understanding of the role they play. This will lead to a greater appreciation of nutritional ecology involved with endangered animals such as coral reefs that are found in low-nutrient tropical seas. 

She has a lab named after her called Angert Lab and there they look at the characterizing cellular modifications that support a bulky cell size in the bacterium. These members of the Angert Lab are involved in numerous outreach programs that share ideas with the K-12 generation about their enthusiasm for biology. Other things they are trying to look at are the identification of the molecular mechanisms in internal offspring formation and the development. 

From this research she wants to mainly observe how these cells are able to surmount the restrictions that keep most other bacteria small. So why is this bacterium able to grow to such a significant size? Also, the development of the unique reproductive program that is observed in these bacteria and others is also an interest to Angert and her team. 

Retrieved from http://biology.cornell.edu/search-research/userprofile/era23 

Retrieved from https://micro.cornell.edu/people/esther-angert 

Ocean Dead Zones are Getting Worse

This is an algal bloom off the coast of Maryland which help contribute to the formation of dead zones.

The article I chose is called Ocean Dead Zones are Getting Worse Globally Due to Climate Change and is dated November 10th, 2014. It is mainly about how dead zones are progressively increasing across the globe. These low hypoxic areas have doubled in frequency every ten years since the 1960’s, according to Alteiri and Gedan of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Maryland. Altieri and Gedan write in a newspaper that is in Global Change Biology today. The opening statement of the article talks about how dead zones will increase by the end of the century due to climate change. This was stated by a few of the authors presented in my literature review.

This article is written by Sarah Zielinski. She also mentions that dead zones can be created or become worse due to human activities. She describes the whole process of how a dead zone is created. It starts with runoff with the nutrients in it which feed an algal bloom. These nutrients contain phosphorus or nitrogen which is what ignites these algal blooms. When the organisms (algae) eventually die, they decompose which sucks up the oxygen in the water causing a dramatic decrease in the oxygen level in a body of water. Altieri and Gedan were a source brought up in the article who say, “Climate change will drive expansion of dead zones, and has likely contributed to the observed spread of dead zones over recent decades". This statement agrees with what she Zielinski says about dead zones. 

This article focuses on the main causes that are thought to be by scientists. Hence the title, climate change is what the author focuses on but there are many other potential factors to the formation of dead zones. There are solutions to this problem and one is brought up at the end of the article and that is to reduce the nutrient pollution. If this is lessened, then there will be less nitrogen and/or phosphorus for algal blooms to feed off of and there will be less dead zones across the globe.

McLendon Russell. (2011). What is the gulf of mexico Dead Zone? Retrieved from http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/translating-uncle-sam/stories/what-is-the-gulf-of-mexico-dead-zone 

Zielinski, Sarah. (2014). Ocean Dead Zones are Getting Worse Globally Due to Climate Change. Retrieved from http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/ocean-dead-zones-are-getting-worse-globally-due-climate-change-180953282/ 

What exactly is a 'dead zone' and what are its effects?

The term 'dead zone' is most likely an unfamiliar term to most people. Dead zones are an area in a body of water such as earth’s oceans or large lakes that have a much lower oxygen level than it should have. This not only affects the water quality, but it leads to a decrease in the wildlife that lives there. When the oxygen level in water decreases drastically, this leaves the animals with two choices which are to flee from their habitat or they can die. This should not be the case and is a problem occurring in known places such as the Gulf of Mexico and the Chesapeake Bay. There are over 400 dead zones around the world.

This shows where the dead zones are located around the world.

There are many believable causes of dead zones. According to Aaron Cohen, he says the main one is from industrial agriculture (p. 7). This is because of all the fertilizers used and with the numerous amounts of nitrate that they contain. When these are used on their fields, the rain will send them to the runoff and down into the waters. There is then a buildup of the nitrates into the water and will then decrease that waters oxygen levels. Others believe it is natural causes such as climate change.

As mentioned before, this is a severe environmental problem that directly affects the wildlife such as crabs, fish, and many other organisms. Fish have a hard time getting away from these dead zone areas because they need water to breathe and getting out of the oxygen depleted waters is not a choice for them. Other animals such as frogs and crabs can live and move on land so they have a chance on getting to another spot to live. These creatures are majorly affected but so are their homes as well. These low oxygen levels end up destroying the animals’ habitats and therefore leads to them searching to find new ones. This is an issue that is occurring presently and there are many researchers investigating it and trying to find solutions to help. Possible solutions that have been mentioned are ways such as trying to decrease the amount of fertilizers used or even having different products used that do not have the harmful nitrates in them. This would be for if industrial agriculture is the main contributor. There are many possible contributors to dead zones but researchers have not pin-pointed the main one.

Simmons, Amy. (2010). Scientists fear mass extinction as oceans choke. ABC News. Retrieved from https://nofishleft.wordpress.com/tag/marine-dead-zones/  

Cohen, A. M. (2009). Oceans' dead zones on the rise. The Futurist, 43(6), 7-8. Retrieved from

http://search.proquest.com/docview/218583270?accountid=14541