Up Now, Edited Tomorrow
This is nowhere near cohesive or complete, a lot of work needs to be done on it and it should be finished this weekend. Sources will be placed in the proper format and citations inserted where appropriate.
This moth I will be focusing on the topic of global warming, or what I personally prefer, the “Climate Change Crisis.”
Few people are fully aware on the seamless nature of our biosphere, and that all of our ecosystems are now in decline. Global warming does not simply mean that you can enjoy a weekend by the pool in the middle of winter, or that your New York flat will become beach front property. Due to the increased temperature of the Earth, the ocean will not only rise, but potentially fail.
At the tip of the iceberg are the pollutants constantly entering our bay areas, and as a result our bays are rapidly becoming Dead or “Hypoxic” Zones. A hypoxic zone is an area where the water near the bottom contains less than 2 ppm of dissolved oxygen (DO), the condition itself is referred to as hypoxia. The largest Dead Zone in the world is the Gulf of Mexico, fed by the Mississippi River, which spans 6,000 to 7,000 square miles. The Mississippi River Basin drains much of the United States, and this run-off contains remnants of fertilizer, animal waste, sediment and human sewage.
Interior watersheds of the Mississippi River Basin, the source of materials causing the 6,000- to 7,000-square-mile "dead zone," or hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico.
This nutrient enrichment is a natural occurrence, but humans have come to enhance it and this abundance of nitrogen and phosphorus causes algal blooms. Thusly, the blooms cannot be sustained, the algae die and bacteria move into the clean up the remains of the algae. In the act of breaking down their food, bacteria use the oxygen in the water. But in these super-sized bacterial feeding frenzies, they use all of the available oxygen and create areas devoid of life. These Dead Zones are not only devastating to the biodiversity of the bays, but can impact the fishing industry. The Gulf of Mexico alone is the supplier for 72% of U.S. harvest shrimp, 66% of oysters, and 16% of fish (Potash and Phosphate Institutes of the U.S. and Canada, 1999).
Water pollution is especially tricky to remedy because it is fed by point source and non-point source pollution. These respectively, are pollution with an obvious known source, such as a factory, and pollution with an indiscriminate source, such as runoff of fertilizer from a lawn. Corporations, at a minimum, dump 5 million gallons of pollution per day into rivers and bays, meanwhile, non-point source pollution is an equally destructive contributor, but seems to be more innocuous.
An example of point source pollution in the Ohio River, this runoff is being delivered via a single, identifiable source.
Among these are fertilizer, sewage, items that are washed off the streets in storms, and waste that people dump down storm drains, like oil. One gallon of old motor oil can pollute over two million gallons of water. A common and very visible sign of non-point source pollution are cigarette butts, of which over one trillion are estimated to be littered every year.
The point source pollution from factories, however, should not be trivialized; many of the chemicals dumped are suspect agents for many now common ailments. The short list contains diseases such as ADHD, autism, childhood cancer and diabetes, and as an explanation for the sudden rash of breast and prostate cancers. Also among the common chemicals are heavy metals which quickly join the food chain, becoming concentrated in fish frequently consumed by humans like Tuna.
But our large fish are in trouble as well, and not just as a result of the overwhelming amounts of pollution entering our oceans. In the past half century, we have fished around 90% of most of our large fish from the sea. Since records started in the 1800’s, there has been an extensive loss of coastal species, a depletion of about 40%. Currently, one-third of coastal fisheries are now useless. As a result of overfishing in close to shore, fisherman have moved to deeper waters, destroying deep sea ecosystems and increasing by catch, which are organism pulled from the bottom. This by catch removes billions of organisms every year, and many of them don’t survive the long trip to the surfaces. This greatly impacts the biodiversity of the ocean, and experiments have shown the reducing the diversity of an ecosystem lowers the abundance of fish. It is estimated that that many of the large fish we have depleted will never recover.
Global totals for the amount of fish caught during the past half-century provide a misleadingly reassuring view of the state of the world's fisheries. The increasing catch of small, free-swimming (pelagic) species has masked stagnation in take of bottom-dwelling (demersal) fish.
Linda Huff; Source: United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
Mean trophic level of the catch from many regions, including the Mediterranean Sea (upper left) and the northwest Atlantic Ocean (upper right) has declined over the past 50 years. The global mean for freshwater fisheries shows almost continuous decline (lower left), but the general trend for marine fisheries (lower right) is complicated by the rise of the fishery for Peruvian anchoveta in the late 1950s and its subsequent collapse in the early 1970s. Because anchovies are assigned to a comparatively low trophic level, output from this productive fishery creates a prominent dip in the record of global marine catch (blue line).Omitting statistics from the area containing this fishery produces a smooth decline (black line). Edward Roberts
A viable solution to the problems faced from overfishing, would be for the average American consumer to become less picky about their fish options. What I mean by this, is the purposeful omission of “trash fish” from our diets. Trash fish are called such due to their, generally, unpleasant experience. But these fish are plentiful, easy to farm, and have a similar if not identical taste to many fish people consume even now. Soon, we may have no alternative. A major international study, completed and released in fall of 2006 in the magazine Science revealed that about a third of all fisheries worldwide have collapsed. The collapse of a fishery is defined as a decline to less than 10% of their maximum known abundance. If these current trends continue, all fish stocks worldwide will collapse within 50 years.
These all, however, are manmade problems concerning the oceans, global warming, whether aggravated by humans or not, will do more than its share. Due to the damage we have caused the oceans will have a difficult time recovering, but if the oceans were to warm as well, it would be devastating. The ocean has a warm cool cycle that occurs beneath the ocean surface, with the cool water cycling down from the surface and a sort of tumbling effect. Were the surface water of the ocean to warm, combined with the vast Dead Zones, the ocean would become stagnate. The last time this occurred was during the End Permian Mass Extinction, when 95% of all life on Earth died. In comparison, when large reptiles were eradicated from the Earth, only 50% of all life on Earth died.
Also occurring in the ocean currently is acidification. The injection of larger than normal amounts of CO2 into the ocean is causing the creation of carbonic acid, lowering the pH of ocean water. While a 150% increase in ocean acidity would be undetectable by humans, many of the oceans most vital organisms are very sensitive to even small changes in pH, among them reef forming corals, phytoplankton, and other mollusks. These organisms are known as marine calcifiers, and their calcium carbonate shells will dissolve in waters that are too acidic. Unfortunately, no one is certain precisely how severely this ocean acidification will impact many marine species, and as a result further research is needed. The coral reefs of the world are already in a state of extreme deterioration, and carbonic acid would only further slow the attempted repair.
Sources
http://www.nwrc.usgs.gov/factshts/016-00/016-00.htm
http://serc.carleton.edu/microbelife/topics/deadzone/
http://www.cleanoceanaction.org/index.php?id=107
http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Po-Re/Pollution-Sources-Point-and-Nonpoint.html
http://www.seafriends.org.nz/issues/fishing/pauly0.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6108414.stm
http://timeforchange.org/ocean-acidification-effect-of-global-warming
http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/2004/nov/science/pt_warming.html
This moth I will be focusing on the topic of global warming, or what I personally prefer, the “Climate Change Crisis.”
Few people are fully aware on the seamless nature of our biosphere, and that all of our ecosystems are now in decline. Global warming does not simply mean that you can enjoy a weekend by the pool in the middle of winter, or that your New York flat will become beach front property. Due to the increased temperature of the Earth, the ocean will not only rise, but potentially fail.
At the tip of the iceberg are the pollutants constantly entering our bay areas, and as a result our bays are rapidly becoming Dead or “Hypoxic” Zones. A hypoxic zone is an area where the water near the bottom contains less than 2 ppm of dissolved oxygen (DO), the condition itself is referred to as hypoxia. The largest Dead Zone in the world is the Gulf of Mexico, fed by the Mississippi River, which spans 6,000 to 7,000 square miles. The Mississippi River Basin drains much of the United States, and this run-off contains remnants of fertilizer, animal waste, sediment and human sewage.
Interior watersheds of the Mississippi River Basin, the source of materials causing the 6,000- to 7,000-square-mile "dead zone," or hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico.
This nutrient enrichment is a natural occurrence, but humans have come to enhance it and this abundance of nitrogen and phosphorus causes algal blooms. Thusly, the blooms cannot be sustained, the algae die and bacteria move into the clean up the remains of the algae. In the act of breaking down their food, bacteria use the oxygen in the water. But in these super-sized bacterial feeding frenzies, they use all of the available oxygen and create areas devoid of life. These Dead Zones are not only devastating to the biodiversity of the bays, but can impact the fishing industry. The Gulf of Mexico alone is the supplier for 72% of U.S. harvest shrimp, 66% of oysters, and 16% of fish (Potash and Phosphate Institutes of the U.S. and Canada, 1999).
Water pollution is especially tricky to remedy because it is fed by point source and non-point source pollution. These respectively, are pollution with an obvious known source, such as a factory, and pollution with an indiscriminate source, such as runoff of fertilizer from a lawn. Corporations, at a minimum, dump 5 million gallons of pollution per day into rivers and bays, meanwhile, non-point source pollution is an equally destructive contributor, but seems to be more innocuous.
An example of point source pollution in the Ohio River, this runoff is being delivered via a single, identifiable source.
Among these are fertilizer, sewage, items that are washed off the streets in storms, and waste that people dump down storm drains, like oil. One gallon of old motor oil can pollute over two million gallons of water. A common and very visible sign of non-point source pollution are cigarette butts, of which over one trillion are estimated to be littered every year.
The point source pollution from factories, however, should not be trivialized; many of the chemicals dumped are suspect agents for many now common ailments. The short list contains diseases such as ADHD, autism, childhood cancer and diabetes, and as an explanation for the sudden rash of breast and prostate cancers. Also among the common chemicals are heavy metals which quickly join the food chain, becoming concentrated in fish frequently consumed by humans like Tuna.
But our large fish are in trouble as well, and not just as a result of the overwhelming amounts of pollution entering our oceans. In the past half century, we have fished around 90% of most of our large fish from the sea. Since records started in the 1800’s, there has been an extensive loss of coastal species, a depletion of about 40%. Currently, one-third of coastal fisheries are now useless. As a result of overfishing in close to shore, fisherman have moved to deeper waters, destroying deep sea ecosystems and increasing by catch, which are organism pulled from the bottom. This by catch removes billions of organisms every year, and many of them don’t survive the long trip to the surfaces. This greatly impacts the biodiversity of the ocean, and experiments have shown the reducing the diversity of an ecosystem lowers the abundance of fish. It is estimated that that many of the large fish we have depleted will never recover.
Global totals for the amount of fish caught during the past half-century provide a misleadingly reassuring view of the state of the world's fisheries. The increasing catch of small, free-swimming (pelagic) species has masked stagnation in take of bottom-dwelling (demersal) fish.
Linda Huff; Source: United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
Mean trophic level of the catch from many regions, including the Mediterranean Sea (upper left) and the northwest Atlantic Ocean (upper right) has declined over the past 50 years. The global mean for freshwater fisheries shows almost continuous decline (lower left), but the general trend for marine fisheries (lower right) is complicated by the rise of the fishery for Peruvian anchoveta in the late 1950s and its subsequent collapse in the early 1970s. Because anchovies are assigned to a comparatively low trophic level, output from this productive fishery creates a prominent dip in the record of global marine catch (blue line).Omitting statistics from the area containing this fishery produces a smooth decline (black line). Edward Roberts
A viable solution to the problems faced from overfishing, would be for the average American consumer to become less picky about their fish options. What I mean by this, is the purposeful omission of “trash fish” from our diets. Trash fish are called such due to their, generally, unpleasant experience. But these fish are plentiful, easy to farm, and have a similar if not identical taste to many fish people consume even now. Soon, we may have no alternative. A major international study, completed and released in fall of 2006 in the magazine Science revealed that about a third of all fisheries worldwide have collapsed. The collapse of a fishery is defined as a decline to less than 10% of their maximum known abundance. If these current trends continue, all fish stocks worldwide will collapse within 50 years.
These all, however, are manmade problems concerning the oceans, global warming, whether aggravated by humans or not, will do more than its share. Due to the damage we have caused the oceans will have a difficult time recovering, but if the oceans were to warm as well, it would be devastating. The ocean has a warm cool cycle that occurs beneath the ocean surface, with the cool water cycling down from the surface and a sort of tumbling effect. Were the surface water of the ocean to warm, combined with the vast Dead Zones, the ocean would become stagnate. The last time this occurred was during the End Permian Mass Extinction, when 95% of all life on Earth died. In comparison, when large reptiles were eradicated from the Earth, only 50% of all life on Earth died.
Also occurring in the ocean currently is acidification. The injection of larger than normal amounts of CO2 into the ocean is causing the creation of carbonic acid, lowering the pH of ocean water. While a 150% increase in ocean acidity would be undetectable by humans, many of the oceans most vital organisms are very sensitive to even small changes in pH, among them reef forming corals, phytoplankton, and other mollusks. These organisms are known as marine calcifiers, and their calcium carbonate shells will dissolve in waters that are too acidic. Unfortunately, no one is certain precisely how severely this ocean acidification will impact many marine species, and as a result further research is needed. The coral reefs of the world are already in a state of extreme deterioration, and carbonic acid would only further slow the attempted repair.
Sources
http://www.nwrc.usgs.gov/factshts/016-00/016-00.htm
http://serc.carleton.edu/microbelife/topics/deadzone/
http://www.cleanoceanaction.org/index.php?id=107
http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Po-Re/Pollution-Sources-Point-and-Nonpoint.html
http://www.seafriends.org.nz/issues/fishing/pauly0.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6108414.stm
http://timeforchange.org/ocean-acidification-effect-of-global-warming
http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/2004/nov/science/pt_warming.html