Beyond Science into Policy: Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia and the Mississippi River

C oastal eutrophication is a major, global environmental problem that tracks increases in population and the concentration of those increases in coastal regions, increased agricultural production in adjacent river basins, and increasing food and energy consumption. Society has altered global nitrogen and phosphorus cycles and increased the availability of these two nutrients to marine ecosystems through generation of wastewater, application of fertilizers, nitrogen fixation by leguminous crops, and atmospheric deposition of oxidized nitrogen from fossil-fuel combustion