Infrastructure built to protect cities from flooding can increase economic damages elsewhere.
Image credit: Michelle A. Hummel.
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Edited by David M. Karl, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI, and approved August 6, 2008 (received for review April 21, 2008)
Abstract
Hypoxia is a mounting problem affecting the world's coastal waters, with severe consequences for marine life, including death and catastrophic changes. Hypoxia is forecast to increase owing to the combined effects of the continued spread of coastal eutrophication and global warming. A broad comparative analysis across a range of contrasting marine benthic organisms showed that hypoxia thresholds vary greatly across marine benthic organisms and that the conventional definition of 2 mg O2/liter to designate waters as hypoxic is below the empirical sublethal and lethal O2 thresholds for half of the species tested. These results imply that the number and area of coastal ecosystems affected by hypoxia and the future extent of hypoxia impacts on marine life have been generally underestimated.
Footnotes
- *To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: raquel.vaquer{at}uib.es
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Author contributions: R.V.-S. and C.M.D. designed research; R.V.-S. performed research; R.V.-S. and C.M.D. analyzed data; and R.V.-S. and C.M.D. wrote the paper.
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The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
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This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/0803833105/DCSupplemental.
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Freely available online through the PNAS open access option.
- © 2008 by The National Academy of Sciences of the USA
Thresholds of hypoxia for marine biodiversity
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- Biological Sciences
- Ecology
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