How climate change could turn America’s poorest region into a produce-growing hub
In FERN’s latest story, published with Switchyard Magazine, reporter Robert Kunzig takes us to the upper Mississippi River Delta, where the idea of growing more fruits and vegetables — to ease the burden on California in the climate-change era — is taking root.
Ice cover on the upper Mississippi was fleeting this winter. Is this our future?
The above-average temperatures across the upper Midwest, driven in part by the El Niño climate pattern and in part by human-caused climate change, made for less than one month of safe ice on the Mississippi River this winter, scientists estimate. (No paywall)
The Army Corps’ $50 million Mississippi River restoration project
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is proposing a new Mississippi River restoration project, starting with a 39-mile stretch near Memphis, Tennessee, that could help save threatened and endangered aquatic animals. The agency still needs to secure $50 million in funding.(No paywall)
Low water on Mississippi hits grain prices at the farm gate
Farmers in the Midwest and the mid-South are paying the price for low water on the Mississippi River in the form of lower cash bids for their corn and soybeans — as much as $2 a bushel lower for soybeans, said USDA economists on Wednesday. At the same time, the cost of transporting fertilizer upriver has increased, and neither situation is likely to change before late winter.
U.S. is driest in a decade, as drought moves eastward
More than six of every 10 acres in the continental United States is in drought, with arid conditions stretching from the Appalachians to the Pacific Coast, said the weekly Drought Monitor on Thursday. Conditions worsened in the Ohio Valley, as warm weather combined with below-normal precipitation to dry the Midwest.
Drought in Plains and Southeast, says NOAA’s winter forecast
Winter will be drier and warmer than usual for the central to southern Plains and the Southeast, said government forecasters on Thursday, suggesting there would be little drought relief in major wheat-growing states or precipitation to restore water levels in the Mississippi River. It would be the third U.S. winter in a row under the La Niña pattern, which typically brings warmer and drier weather to the U.S. southern tier, from California to the Carolinas.
Churned by hurricane, ‘dead zone’ is one-third expected size
The fish-killing "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico this summer is the third-smallest in 34 years of surveys, reported scientists. At 2,116 square miles, the hypoxic region is about one-third the size of the forecast of 6,700 square miles.
‘Dead zone’ in Gulf is eighth-largest on record
The fish-killing “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico this summer covers 6,952 square miles, midway in size between Connecticut and New Jersey, said researchers on Thursday. It is the eighth-largest dead zone in 33 years of keeping records.
A flooding reprieve for 25,000 acres of Louisiana farmland
A spillway on the Mississippi River designed to prevent the river from overflowing its levees and inundating towns and cities in Louisiana will likely be opened for only the third time in history this Sunday, flooding 25,000 acres of farmland in the Atchafalaya basin and all but guaranteeing a total crop loss for farmers in the area.
‘Extensive flooding’ to continue through May
Spring rains and melting snow are helping to create the potential for major or moderate flooding in 25 states, with the greatest threat in the northern Plains and the upper Mississippi River basin, said NOAA in a spring outlook issued on Thursday.
Record-setting Gulf dead zone may get worse
This past spring, Louisiana-based professor Dr. Nancy Rabalais, perhaps the world’s most renowned researcher on marine dead zones, predicted that the summer of 2017 would see the largest hypoxic area in the Gulf of Mexico in recorded history. Last month she was proven right.
‘Dead zone’ is largest ever recorded, covers one-seventh of Gulf of Mexico
Marine scientists estimate the low-oxygen "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico covers a record 8,776 square miles, or one-seventh of the basin. "This large dead zone size shows that nutrient pollution, primarily from agriculture and developed land runoff in the Mississippi River watershed, is continuing to affect the nation’s coastal resources and habitats in the Gulf," said NOAA.
Voluntary efforts ‘not even making modest dents in nutrient pollution’
A mandated interstate "pollution diet" intended to reduce nutrient runoff into the Chesapeake Bay is paying off, while voluntary measures to reduce nitrogen levels in Mississippi River have failed, writes a University of Michigan professor at the site The Conversation. "From my perspective, when we compare these two approaches it is clear that voluntary measures are not even making modest dents in nutrient pollution," says professor Donald Scavia, who has worked on the issue of "dead zones" for four decades.
Will the Mississippi River become ‘just another polluted waterway’?
The Mississippi River, rising from Lake Istasca in northern Minnesota to flow 2,340 miles to the Gulf of Mexico, "is heading toward an ecological precipice," says the Minneapolis Star Tribune in a special report. In five years, 400 square miles of forests, marshes and grasslands in the upper Mississippi have been converted to agriculture and urban development, "endangering the cleanest stretch of America’s greatest river with farm chemicals, depleted groundwater and urban runoff."
Report card gives Mississippi River basin D+
The Mississippi River basin got an overall grade of D+ in a report card from America’s Watershed Initiative, which looked at six areas – flood control, transportation, water supply, economy, recreation and ecosystems. The lowest mark, a D-, was for transportation, said St Louis Public Radio. …
Nutrient compliance, pay-for-gain mooted for conservation
Researchers know that a comparatively small share of cropland accounts for a disproportionate amount of erosion and nutrient runoff, writes economist Marc Ribaudo in Choices, the ag econ journal.
Wetlands benefits vary for greenhouse gases, nitrate runoff
Wetlands in the upper Mississippi and Ohio River watersheds can remove up to 1,800 pounds of nitrogen per acre from field runoff, says a USDA study of the economic benefits of wetland conservation.
Fertilizer management, filtering can cut runoff by 45%
Nitrogen runoff could be reduced by 45 percent in the Mississippi River basin - the heart of U.S. grain farming - with adoption of practices that reduce fertilizer waste and conversion of as little as 3.1 million acres of farmland to filter and hold nutrients that now flow downstream, says a research paper. Nitrogen runoff from farms and other sources is blamed for the "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico.