A PLANNED increase in US ethanol production from corn would spell environmental “disaster” for marine species in the Gulf of Mexico, said a co-author of a science study.
A boost in corn production will worsen the Gulf’s so-called “dead zone”, an area with so little oxygen that sealife suffocates, said Simon Donner, a geographer at the University of British Columbia in Canada.
Dr Donner and Chris Kucharik of the University of Wisconsin used computer models to conclude that growing enough corn to meet US biofuel goals set for 2022 would cause a boost of 10 to 34 per cent in nitrogen pollution in the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers, which run into the Gulf of Mexico.