Causes of Dead Zones
What is nutrient runoff?
These are the two options that plants and animals have when their environment is becoming a dead zone.
What is die or migrate?
This specific location on the west Magnolia coastline has shown signs of hypoxia since the 1990s and is linked to the King County Sewage Plant.
What is West Point?
Dead zones currently cover this many square kilometers of ocean worldwide, a number that has been growing every decade.
What is 250,000 km2?
Farmers used these buffer zones between fields and waterways to cut nutrient runoff by up to this percentage
What is 40%?
This microscopic organism, fueled by nutrient runoff, grows explosively and eventually depletes oxygen when it dies.
What is phytoplankton (algae)?
In this many years, all of Earth's water will be affected.
What is 30 years?
This Washington state inlet has been observed as hypoxic since the 1930s and currently has dissolved oxygen levels at an all-time low
What is Hood Canal?
What is 2 mg/L?
This future technology pumps oxygen-rich surface water downward and is up to 100 times more efficient than seafloor bubbling.
What is downwelling?
When oxygen levels in water drop low enough that most marine life cannot survive, the water is said to be in this condition, the defining characteristic of a dead zone.
What is hypoxia?
Beyond fisheries, dead zones also devastate this coastal industry by making waters murky, smelly, and ecologically barren.
What is tourism?
Climate change is intensifying this weather phenomenon in the Pacific Northwest, which leads to more nutrient runoff and thus more dead zones.
What is (heavy) rainfall?
The number of dead zones does this every decade, meaning the problem compounds over time.
What is doubles?
What is seaweed?
Dead zones most frequently occur in these types of environments.
What are coastline (coastal) environments?
When dead zones spread, entire ecosystems lose their foundation because these organisms are wiped out first.
What are benthic (bottom-dwelling) organisms?
These two local sources highly contribute nutrients to Hood Canal's dead zone.
What is runoff and septic tanks (failing septic tanks)?
Dead zones tend to peak and worsen during this season, when upwelling is strongest and algae growth is highest.
What is summer?
The Baltic Sea Action Plan proved that this type of international approach, with binding targets and shared data, can actually reverse dead zones.
What is global cooperation?
In the last 50 years, hypoxia rates have increased due to these two things.
What are human activities and pollutants?
This is the physical process where warm, lighter water sits on top and cold, denser water stays trapped below, preventing oxygen from reaching dead zones.
What is stratification?
Puget Sound's dead zone tracker uses three color categories. Name all three.
What is eutrophic, hypoxic, and improved hypoxic?
This natural ocean process continuously takes oxygen-rich water from the surface of coastal regions, making some seasonal dead zones permanent.
What is coastal upwelling?
Producing green hydrogen splits water molecules and releases this byproduct, which researchers want to pump into hypoxic coastal water.
What is pure oxygen?