Interactive Map of Eutrophication & Hypoxia

Awesome site, I love how it it labeled accurately. Definitely something to help out on some science work.

For a world wide organization you have absolutely nothing to say about water in Mexico.
Why? Mexico is a country that mimics everything in the USA and water in the USA, a world leader, is
absolutely uncontrolled, destroying life as we know it. So, now the import of that
ignorance is filtering through to the rest of the world? And, Mexico in particular.
Again, why no information about water in Mexico? Bottled water in particuar and
water purification systems as well. What resource is available for this subject?

I was quite surprised by the inaccuracies and misrepresentations of parts of your website. I will refer only to two locations, although I suspect that similar problems extend to many other citations as well. The number of simple mistakes, aside from the legitimate differences in scientific opinion, reduces the confidence that one should have in the overall reliability of your website and does a disservice to our mutual goals of mitigating anthropogenic environmental stressors.
St. Helena Sound - South Carolina: Is referred to as "a tidal creek". It is a 12.1 kilometer wide, 203 square kilometer inlet of the Atlantic Ocean into which drains three major, relatively clean river systems. While there may be small tidal creeks which drain into the Sound and periodically go hypoxic, the Sound itself certainly cannot be classified as hypoxic. The Bricker report (itself a flawed document) upon which your classification is based ascribes "Low" Reliability and Confidence to its assessment of eutrophic conditions for St. Helena Sound.
Ace Basin - South Carolina: First of all, it is "ACE", not "Ace". It stands for the Ashepoo, Combahee, and Edisto rivers that converge through this estuary to form St. Helena Sound. Second, it is in South Carolina, not North Carolina. At 350,000 acres, the ACE Basin is one of the largest undeveloped estuaries on the East coast. It is hardly "part of the South Edisto River", but rather the South Edisto is part of the ACE Basin. While it "includes St. Pierre Creek and Big Bay" Creek, the ACE includes hundreds of other tidal creeks as well. With about 40% of the area protected as federal, state, and private conservation properties and most of the rest undeveloped, the "Runoff from urban, industrial, and agricultural activities" that you describe is quite minimal. Even the water that flows into the basin from upstream passes through miles of extensive wetlands that effectively filter the water. As a result the ACE Basin is often used as a pristine control site for studies that investigate pollution elsewhere along the coast. The Sanger report that is cited reports data from two creeks (St. Pierre and Big Bay) that are part of the National Estuarine Research Reserve System monitoring program. It points out that most of the hypoxic events observed in these creeks are less than 4 hours in duration, occur during low tide, and essentially only during the summer or early fall when the temperatures are high. Such hypoxic events under these circumstances and locations are probably natural occurrences and there is no evidence of which I am aware that they are correlated with pollution at these sites as you imply. I think that it is a misrepresentation to list a 350,000 acre estuary as hypoxic based on measurements made only in tidal creeks under specific conditions that naturally induce low oxygen. One other observation, the photo included for the ACE Basin listing is from a lake (not the Edisto River) in Edisto Gardens, Orangeburg, SC which is about 60 miles inland as the crow flies from the northern boundary of the ACE Basin. Too many inaccuracies.

I think there are also about half a dozen natural dead zones in the world. one of those is found at Saanich Inlet on Vancouver Island in BC Canada. do you monitor these as well to see if they are growing?

thanks for this work. I believe the Hood Canal in WA state should be added to your map.

Hi there!

Just to let you note that in Diaz, R., M. Selman. and C. Chique. 2011. Global Eutrophic and Hypoxic Coastal Systems. World Resources Institute. Eutrophication and Hypoxia: Nutrient Pollution in Coastal Waters. docs.wri.org/wri_eutrophic_hypoxic_dataset_2011-03.xls reference ID 74 should read Mulsow et al. 2006 instead of 2009. The same for the information provided in the map.

My recognition to your outstanding work.

Best regards

Hello - I like the website but the information on San Francisco Bay and Tomales Bay is inaccurate.

Tomales Bay, north of San Francisco is considered a "reference" site and pristine enough for commercial oyster growing operations. Hypoxia and eutrophication are not issues that I've heard reported there.

The various embayments in San Francisco bay have not experienced low DO since the 1960s. All municipal wastewater has been provided at least secondary treatment since 1980, in the South Bay since 1970 or earlier.

Eutrophication has not been an issue in SF Bay since it is highly turbid/light limited. In the northern part of SF Bay the concern over the last decade or so has been about too low a phytoplankton productivity.

The link below is to a draft literature review report that assesses the nutrient status of SF Bay.

The report, entitled Numeric Nutrient Endpoint Development for San Francisco Bay Estuary: Literature Review and Data Gaps Analysis, can be downloaded from the SF Bay NNE project page on the Water Board's website at

http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/sanfranciscobay/water_issues/p...

Thanks for this homepage!...This is a great source of information.
I am from Chile and Know is posible found other sities with similar problems in the south of Chile, Is it possible to have more info about this region?

Catherine Ortega Yanca

Wonderful work - most folks I speak with are still) unaware of dead zones or the devastation occurring to the oceans, globally. Your work is very important - thank-you!

I live in Newfoundland, the farthest east coast of Canada (North America). From your map, we are a high 'eutrophication' area. I am not familiar with this term. Could you please let me know exactly what this means.

I'm loving this map!
All of the data collection is impressive! I would love to see a corresponding map containing areas where natural Hypoxic and Eutrophic areas might occur, and the difference in scale between those and what this map shows of current, human affected areas. That might require more hypothesis than data (as we don't have much pre-industrial era data), I assume, but still I would love to see it! Perhaps one could use sea floor cores to see the environment change each year and season the way they used lake bed cores in Ireland to accurately show the last ice age on a month-by-month scale?

The map is not appearing after the page is loaded.

Thank you for putting this up - it is both fascinating and horrifying!

I did spot something that needs correction: The "Fleet lagoon UK-Wales (50.616111, -2.5197220" entry is incorrect: Fleet is on the south coast of England not Wales!

In Canada portions of the Great Lakes become hypoxic each summer. I believe a number of lakes in Winnipeg do as well.

Well, we as a species have just failed to learn even yet how to NOT SH%T where we eat. (So to speak, ahem.)

Maybe a little thing like bi-peds dying off in the gazillions would make a dent in global consciousness?

Hi,

WOW this is so interesting, what a great cause!

I am trying to find high quality pdf or jpeg versions of your maps on water stresss, please can you tell me/share the links where I can find these?

Many thanks

I just found your site and I am amazed at the wealth of information it contains. I am from Ghana and I must say it is sad that not much is done to protect our water bodies. In fact your description of Korle Lagoon is an understatement. To me, it is the most polluted lagoon in the world. It is one of the main reasons why I am taking grad school (env sci n policy) in the states. I will be happy to join any group that wants to salvage this water body.

In the 'Mekong River Delta' blurb you write: " Eutrophic symptoms seem to be concentrated in upstream reaches around Phnom Penh (Thailand)..."
This should be corrected, Phnom Penh is the capital of Cambodia.

I work for the Jobos Bay NERR where a hypoxia event has been documented from our water quality monitoring program. I would like to let you know that the station is misplaced in your site, coordinates from 1995 to June 2010 were 17° 56.620'N 66° 14.308'W and from July 2011 station was relocated to 17° 56.586'N 66° 14.313'W. The actual display locate the station in agricultural lands.

very impressed, but hope the data of China will be available as well. Great work!

My wife and I just finished sailing our 41' Morgan from Detroit, Michigan to St Marys, Georgia. The Great Lakes spoiled us on the water clarity as compared to the St Johns River with its "Algae Blooms". We will help you with your research in any way we can.

Thanks a lot for this homepage! This is a great source of information. I was wondering whether you could share the underlying literature review with me, so that one can allocate the 'dead zones' more specifically.

Thanks a lot in advance.

With kind regards,

Jenni

Budd Inlet in Washington State (US) has very low dissolved oxygen at certain times of the year in a large part due to the damming off of 260 acres of Deschutes Estuary which created Capitol Lake (reservoir). WA State dept. of Ecology performed a modeling study of this water body and found that algae blooms in Capitol Lake which is very shallow and becomes nearly stagnant in the summer. This algae bloom dies off and flows over the 5th Ave. dam into Budd Inlet where the decaying algae drives down the dissolved oxygen levels to toxic low levels.

Several WA State agencies now recommend removal of the 5th Ave. dam and restoration of the impounded Deschutes Estuary because of the environmental benefit and estuary restoration is tens of millions of dollars cheaper than maintaining the failing reservoir.

Very helpful site; Thank you! I see that the data from the Laurentian Great Lakes (i.e. Huron, Erie, etc.) is not included yet.

I zoomed in on the Texas coast - my home area - and wondered if the palm forest in the Rio Grande delta can ever recover.

Good job in the Mediterranean! I'm impressed.
I study Oceanography at grad-level in Spain and this information seems thorough and very useful indeed.
Congratulations

Hello all !
I am really impressed by this work ! I was looking at the Med Basin ...I am from Algeria ! Is it possible to have more info about this region? thank you !