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In late summer 1988 the dead zone disappeared as the great drought caused the flow of Mississippi to fall to its lowest level since 1933. During times of heavy flooding in the Mississippi River Basin, as in 1993, "the "dead zone" dramatically increased in size, approximately 5,000 km (3,107 mi) larger than the previous year". [72]
An example of this is the dead zone located off the coast of the Mississippi River. According to NOAA, the 2016 predicted size of this dead zone is going to be approximately 5,898 square miles with a nitrate concentration of 146,000 metric tons of nitrate flowing down the Mississippi and Atchafalaya River into the Gulf of Mexico. [5]
Discovery of the Mississippi by De Soto A.D. 1541 by William Henry Powell depicts Hernando de Soto and Spanish Conquistadores seeing the Mississippi River for the first time. Map of the French settlements (blue) in North America in 1750, before the French and Indian War (1754 to 1763). c. 1681 map of Marquette and Jolliet's 1673 expedition.
The Mississippi River drains about 41% of the nation's water systems into the Gulf of Mexico. The river itself begins at Lake Itasca in Minnesota and runs through 10 states before it reaches the Gulf.
Streams that empty into the gulf include the Mississippi River and the Rio Grande in the northern gulf and the Grijalva and Usumacinta rivers in the southern gulf. The land that forms the gulf's coast, including many long, narrow barrier islands, is almost uniformly low-lying and is defined by marshes, swamps, and stretches of sandy beach.
The likely starting cause is waste nutrients being carried into the estuaries by the Mississippi River, although the oil made it worse. The dead zone appeared to be created by low amounts of oxygen in the region, known as hypoxic zones, as a result of phosphorus and nitrogen blocking out sunlight. It grows the most during the summer, when the ...
Water levels along the Mississippi River are plummeting for the second year in a row after this summer’s blistering heat and low rainfall triggered extreme drought across parts of the Central US.
The Mississippi River drains the largest area of any U.S. river, much of it agricultural regions. Agricultural runoff and other water pollution that flows to the outlet is the cause of the hypoxic, or dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.