Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
dominated fish community over the last half of the 20
th
century [6]. The pelagic
food web on the Mississippi River influenced shelf has changed in the last
several decades to the point where it is now poised to switch between one with,
and one largely without, the diatom-zooplankton-fish food web [45]. There
are also shifts in diatom community composition with implications for carbon
flux [12] and increased jellyfish abundance from 1987 to 1997 [29]. While
there have been no catastrophic losses in fishery resources in the northern Gulf
of Mexico, the potential impacts of increasing trophic state and worsening
oxygen conditions on ecologically and commercially important species and
altered ecological processes warrant attention.
Acknowledgements
Funding for preparation of this manuscript was provided by the U.S. Dept. of
Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Coastal Ocean
Program grants to N.N. Rabalais and R.E. Turner. We thank B. Cole and A.
Sapp for maintaining our data in a manner helpful to analysis of long-term
trends and for assistance with the preparation of figures.
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