Word: runoffs
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...growing alarm that vast stretches of coastal waters are turning into dead zones - patches of seabed so depleted of oxygen that few creatures, if any, can survive there. In 2004, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) took stock of the phenomenon - which is caused in large part by agricultural runoff - and pronounced it one of the biggest environmental problems of the 21st century. Two years later it noted that the number of identified dead zones, some of which cover thousands of square miles, had climbed from...
Dead zones are created when excess nitrogen and other pollutants in ocean water promote large blooms of algae and phytoplankton on the surface. The nitrogen gets there in a couple of ways: through river water filled with fertilizer from farm runoff and from air polluted with tailpipe and smokestack emissions. When the algae die and sink to the ocean floor, bacteria there break them down, while consuming pretty much all of the available oxygen in the water. The bacteria also proliferate wildly, taking over the ecosystem and exacerbating the oxygen depletion. If conditions like strong currents, which are common...
...their first stumbling block: Weeklong talks were adjourned after the MDC rejected as "insulting" the government's offer to make opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai one of three vice presidents. (Tsvangirai won more votes than Mugabe in the first round of presidential polling on March 29; he withdrew from the runoff race in the face of a campaign of violence against opposition supporters by security forces and militias loyal to Mugabe.) An MDC source at the talks in Pretoria, South Africa, told Agence France-Presse that the government's proposal showed a "complete lack of sincerity and the need to really...
Within hours of Kurt Waldheim's victory in the Austrian presidential runoff on June 8, posters reading BACK TO THE FUTURE began to sprout up around Vienna. Austrian citizens, it seemed, were eager to be done with divisive questions about Waldheim's Nazi past and to let the victorious candidate of the conservative People's Party get on with his job. It was soon apparent, however, that the analgesic effects of the decisive election would not be enough to cure Austria's headache. The very next day, Socialist Chancellor Fred Sinowatz unexpectedly resigned, vowing to devote himself to rebuilding...
...protecting the coral is not that different from protecting any endangered species. First, we need to cut back on activities that ruin their habitat, the shallow waters close to our coast. Agricultural runoff - already responsible for the oceanic "dead zones" seen in the Gulf of Mexico and other heavily built up coasts - has to be curtailed, as does the senselessly destructive fishing practices that have us tossing dynamite or poison into the waters. One of the best strategies is to expand the range of territory protected by marine reserves - national parks of the deep. And here the Bush Administration - usually...