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  • From: su do <speakingbeareturns@yahoo.com>
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Agriculture Is Changing The Chemistry Of The Mississippi River
  • Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 18:54:28 -0800 (PST)

Agriculture Is Changing The Chemistry Of The
Mississippi River

by Staff Writers
New Haven CT (SPX) Jan 31, 2008
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Agriculture_Is_Changing_The_Chemistry_Of_The_M\
ississippi_River_999.html


Midwestern farming has introduced the equivalent of
five Connecticut
Rivers into the Mississippi River over the past 50
years and is adding
more carbon dioxide annually into its waters,
according to a study
published in Nature by researchers at Yale and
Louisiana State universities.

"It's like the discovery of a new large river being
piped out of the
corn belt," said Pete Raymond, lead author of the
study and associate
professor of ecosystem ecology at the Yale School of
Forestry and
Environmental Studies. "Agricultural practices have
significantly
changed the hydrology and chemistry of the Mississippi
River."

The researchers tracked changes in the levels of water
and bicarbonate,
which forms when carbon dioxide in soil water
dissolves rock minerals.
Bicarbonate plays an important, long-term role in
absorbing atmospheric
carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. Oceans then absorb
the excess carbon
dioxide and become more acidic in the process. "Ocean
acidification
makes it more difficult for organisms to form hard
shells in coral
reefs," said R. Eugene Turner, a co-author of the
study and a professor
at the Coastal Ecology Institute at Louisiana State
University.

The researchers concluded that farming practices, such
as liming,
changes in tile drainage and crop type and rotation,
are responsible for
the majority of the increase in water and carbon
dioxide in the
Mississippi River, which is North America's largest
river.

Raymond said that the research team analyzed
100-year-old data on the
Mississippi River, warehoused at two New Orleans water
treatment plants,
along with data on precipitation and water export. "A
notable finding is
that changes in farming practices are more important
than changes in
precipitation to the increase in water being
discharged into the river,"
he said.

The researchers used their data to demonstrate the
effects of excess
water on the carbon content of the river, and to argue
that nutrients
and pollution in the water are altering the chemistry
of the Gulf of Mexico.

*

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