Climate Deniers want NASA to stop looking so closely at Planet Earth.
Here’s one good example of why space based observations are important.
Over the past two decades, scientists have developed ways to predict how ecosystems will react to changing environmental conditions. Called ecological forecasts, these emerging tools, if used effectively, can help reduce pollution to our waterways.
Dead zone and toxic algae forecasts are similar to weather and climate forecasts. They can provide near-term predictions of ecosystem responses to short-term drivers such as this year’s nitrogen and phosphorus inputs. They can also be used in scenarios to analyze the impacts of controlling those drivers in the future.
–Dead zones (hypoxia) are regions within lakes and oceans where oxygen concentrations drop to levels dangerous to marine life. They’re typically caused by decomposing algae, the growth of which is stimulated by nitrogen and phosphorus inputs from land. Toxic algae, also stimulated by these same excess nutrients, can poison aquatic life and humans when they contaminate the water supply.
In recent weeks, I contributed predictions to NOAA’s ensemble forecasts of this year’s dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico and the Chesapeake Bay, and the extent of toxic algae in Lake Erie.
Lake Erie – This year’s Lake Erie toxic algae forecast is for a bloom larger than the one in 2014 that shut down the water supply to a half-million people in Toledo, and approaching the record-setting massive 2011 bloom. It’s worth noting that only a week or two before the formal forecast, NOAA was anticipating a relatively mild bloom, and the changed forecast was the result of one spring storm. Because these blooms are driven by diffuse phosphorus sources from the agriculturally dominated Maumee River watershed, this update is not surprising, and is a reminder of how much this issue is driven by these climate-induced increased storms.
In addition, unlike the dead zones, these blooms are highly dynamic in both time and space. In fact, while the 2014 bloom was much smaller than the massive 2011 bloom, it formed near Toledo’s water supply, and local winds mixed the bloom into the city’s deep-water intakes. So bloom predictions, regardless of size, do not necessarily correlate with risk. Until the phosphorus inputs are reduced significantly and consistently so that only the mildest blooms occur, the people, ecosystem and economy of this region are being threatened. We cannot cross our fingers and hope that seasonal fluctuations in weather will keep us safe.
Another factor in the equation that leads to more and bigger blooms is rainfall. When big rains fall in the region, more fertilizers and therefore more nutrients get washed into the waterways that feed into the lake. After a relatively dry April and May, major rains in June have led to significant nutrient loading in the Erie watershed, which prompted scientists to issue their forecast for a severe bloom that could rival 2011. That major bloom was also linked to extremely heavy rains. This year’s bloom should start this month and peak in September, they said.
Climate change looks to provide a boost to this factor, as a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, which means that when storms form, they have more fuel and lead to more heavy downpours. (Warming lake temperatures are also a factor.)
Already such heavy rainfall events have increased by 37 percent across the Midwest since the late 1950s and could become four to five times as common by 2100 in the area that feeds into the lake if greenhouse gas emissions aren’t reduced, according to the 2014 National Climate Assessment. So if all else stays the same, warming would mean more and potentially more toxic blooms.
It could also tilt the odds in favor of disruptions to local water supplies, as happened with last year’s bloom, which led to a two-day ban on drinking water in Toledo. While these events are typically rare because they require certain weather patterns that mix the algae down from the surface to where water intake pipes are, the shift to more blooms would mean more opportunities for these events to happen.
If you have not watched the interview with Aquatic Biologist Alan Steinman, below, grab some coffee and do so now. One of the best and most informative communicators I have interviewed.
Many of dominoes that have been falling unnoticed by the general population are those of limnic and oceanic degradation through over-harvesting of species, pollution from fertilizer causing red tides and anoxic dead zones , these latter two being exacerbated by aquaculture, and materials pollution from heavy metals, plastics and endocrine disrupting chemicals.
Human introduced invasive species are another issue.
One indicator of this stress are the increases in jellyfish blooms in many coastal and near land locked bodies of water, e.g. the Black Sea, the Caspian and the Baltic. Find a copy of “Stung!: On Jellyfish Blooms and the Future of the Ocean” by Lisa-ann Gershwin.
One overview is found with OCEAN POLLUTION, RED TIDES AND FLOATING SEAS OF TRASH
The history of human depletion of natural ocean resources is well told by Professor Callum Roberts in:
“The Ocean of Life: The Fate of Man and the Sea”
and
“The Unnatural History of the Sea”
note especially the issue of shifting baselines, i.e. the shifting perception of ‘normal’ down the generations.
Thus with all that, it should be no surprise that sea bird populations are also plummeting
An excellent comment with a nice summary of the problems and some good references. I would suggest working factory farming into the first paragraph.
Your use of “limnic” is the first time I’ve seen that word used in years. Why don’t we speak much of limnology today? It was a word that we saw more often in the 60’s, and I even tried to take an NDEA-funded course in it—at Bemidji State—didn’t get in and had to settle for a genetics course at CSU in
Fort Collins. Turned out well—fewer bugs in CO.
You are absolutely correct to mention factory farming which, to use a line from Al Franken “Vast Lagoons of Pig Faeces” in his ‘Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right’.
A list of scholarly articles on aggregates of pig poo will provide enough reading on this topic alone to keep a much younger person occupied for life.
Gershwin in her book describes how fish farming is not only responsible for dead zones forming bellow them, from food residue – fish poo and pesticide use, but draws in jellyfish blooms from the action of the fish within the barriers swimming collectively in one direction only.
Another issue is that of blockage of spawning routes by ill designed dams and now we see tidal barriers being erected for electrical power generation.
I grew up in a city in the UK, Gloucester, and witnessed many times the famed ‘Severn Bore’, which could be impacted by a proposed development. Already a famed local dish – elvers (juvenile eels) have been impacted by human activities becoming almost endangered where once they were plentiful.
I recall staying with my gran in the early 1950s when she regularly brought home a pound or three of these wriggling, writhing transparent creatures. Once she failed to fasten the container lid securely and I walked out into the kitchen to find them climbing the walls with some having reached the ceiling.
I did leave a comment, it is still hanging.
Stuck post freed – thanks.