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Black dots show dead zones of unknown size. The size and number of marine dead zones—areas where the deep water is so low in dissolved oxygen that sea creatures cannot survive (except for some specialized bacteria)—have grown in the past half-century. [1] Dead zones are hypoxic (low-oxygen) areas in the world's oceans and large lakes.
Red circles show the location and size of many dead zones (in 2008). Black dots show dead zones of unknown size. The size and number of marine dead zones—areas where the deep water is so low in dissolved oxygen that sea creatures cannot survive (except for some specialized bacteria)—have grown in the past half-century. [19]
While oxygen minimum zones (OMZs) occur naturally, they can be exacerbated by human impacts like climate change and land-based pollution from agriculture and sewage. The prediction of current climate models and climate change scenarios is that substantial warming and loss of oxygen throughout the majority of the upper ocean will occur. [32]
If oxygen depletion progresses to hypoxia, fish kills can occur and invertebrates like worms and clams on the bottom may be killed as well. Still frame from an underwater video of the sea floor. The floor is covered with crabs, fish, and clams apparently dead or dying from oxygen depletion. Hypoxia may also occur in the absence of pollutants.
In OMZs oxygen concentration drops to levels <10 nM at the base of the oxycline and can remain anoxic for over 700 m depth. [7] This lack of oxygen can be reinforced or increased due to physical processes changing oxygen supply such as eddy-driven advection, [7] sluggish ventilation, [8] increases in ocean stratification, and increases in ocean temperature which reduces oxygen solubility.
Dead zone (ecology) – Low-oxygen areas in coastal zones and lakes caused by eutrophication Hypoxia (environmental) – Low oxygen conditions or levels Meromictic – Permanently stratified lake with layers of water that do not intermix Pages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
When oxygen concentrations are low enough only bacteria and fungi can survive, dead zones form. In the Baltic Sea, low oxygen concentrations also reduce the ability of cod to spawn in bottom waters. Cod spawning requires both high salinity and high oxygen concentrations for cod fry to develop, conditions that are rare in the Baltic Sea today.
This is a list of international environmental agreements. Most of the following agreements are legally binding for countries that have formally ratified them. Some, such as the Kyoto Protocol , differentiate between types of countries and each nation's respective responsibilities under the agreement.