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Sediment from the Mississippi River carries fertilizer to the Gulf of Mexico

Death in the Gulf of Mexico

(From nytimes.com) Gulf of Mexico – Every year for the past couple of decades, scientists have tried to estimate the size of the dead zone that forms where the Mississippi River enters the Gulf of Mexico. This year, it may well be as large as Massachusetts, possibly even exceeding the size it was in 2002 — nearly 8,500 square miles where almost nothing lives.

The dead zone is technically an area of hypoxia, or low oxygen content. A decade later scientists realized it was caused largely by agricultural nitrogen.

There could be no starker reminder of the tragic human tendency to treat the oceans as dumping grounds.

And there is no better symbol of the paradox of American agriculture — the very richness applied to the fields is the source of ecological death hundreds of miles away.

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