"Dead zones" in the Gulf of Mexico -- caused by algae blooms linked to fertilizer runoff -- can hurt crabs, shrimp and other animals.
The Midwest is going through one of the worst droughts in decades. The most recent US Drought Monitor map shows about a third of the Midwest experiencing extreme drought levels. More than 80 percent of Arkansas is in extreme drought, with 44 percent at the harshest level, exceptional drought, according to the map.
But while all of this dryness is hurting farming, it’s actually helping the marine life in the Gulf of Mexico.
Less rain in the Midwest means less runoff from fertilizers and other pollutants making its way into the Gulf. That’s good news for aquatic life, because it shrinks what’s known as the “dead zone” there, an area of lower oxygen.
Researchers at the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium (LUMC) found the area of hypoxia, aka “Dead Zone,” shrank this summer to one of the smallest zones recorded since the researchers began measuring it in 1985. (The size of the zone varies each summer.) Continue Reading →
Four Texas companies receiving the funding are Agrobiofuels, Green Earth Fuels of Houston, Element markets, and White Energy. White Energy produces ethanol from wheat and grain, and the other companies process animal fats and oil into usable forms of energy.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says the payments will “help spur an alternative fuels industry using renewable feedstocks, and help create an economy built to last.” So how much money will the companies be getting, and will it affect food prices?
The Barton Springs Salamander is already on the endangered species list.
Two Texas politicians have introduced legislation to block several species of salamanders in Central Texas from being recognized as endangered or threatened species.
U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) and U.S. Representative John Carter (R-TX) say classifying the amphibians as endangered could hinder area job growth and economic development. “My goal is to make sure the salamanders and people can peacefully co-exist,” Cornyn says. “And we can take care of the concerns about these species but also at the same time not stop the economic growth and job creation that comes along with the boom we are seeing here in Texas and in this part of the state, which has made us the envy of the rest of the country, if not the world.”
A similar creature, the Barton Springs Salamander, is currently listed as endangered. Because of this, the city of Austin must follow a Habitat Conservation Plan approved by the FWS for its management of the salamander’s habitat. Aptly named, the Barton Springs Salamander lives only in Barton Springs Pool and the area immediately around it. Continue Reading →
In a new report from NOAA, “State of The Climate,” the agency suggests that thanks to climate change, Texas is likely to see more extreme heat waves and dry spells like it did last year. Twenty times more likely, in fact.
Computer simulations from scientists in Oregon and England show heat waves and other weather patterns related to the La Niña weather pattern(which results in hotter, drier weather in Texas) as 20 times more likely to occur today than 50 years ago. “We found that extreme heat events were roughly 20 times more likely in 2008 than in other La Niña years in the 1960s and indications of an increase in frequency of low seasonal precipitation totals,” a paper within the report notes. The conditions behind the drought are “distinctly more probable than they were 40–50 years ago,” it says.
While the research doesn’t blame climate change as the sole cause of the extreme drought, it explains how the odds of such events occurring have increased because of global warming. Victor Murphy, a meterologist with the National Weather Service in Fort Worth tells the Houston Chronicle that warm and dry conditions thrive on each other. “Drought begets heat and then heat begets drought and a feedback cycle develops,” he says.
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