SAN DIEGO -- The Blasker Award Committee of The San Diego Foundation has announced that Dr. Nancy N. Rabalais, a professor at the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium (LUMCON) in Chauvin, La., and Dr. R. Eugene Turner, a professor at Louisiana State University (LSU), are the winners of the 1999 Blasker Award for Environmental Science and Engineering. The prize was $250,000 was awarded to Rabalais and Turner at a ceremony in San Diego.
The 1999 award recognizes innovative science contributing to the creation or maintenance of sustainable supplies of water to meet a wide range of needs including agricultural, industrial and domestic use, and the maintenance of natural ecosystems. Rabalais and Turner's research documented that human activity, primarily agricultural practices, have oversaturated the Mississippi River with nutrients such as nitrates. The flow of nutrients leads to oxygen-poor water in the Gulf of Mexico known as the "dead zone" -Ð a hypoxic water mass roughly the size of New Jersey that is devoid of most marine life.
"Rabalais and Turner's achievements are very deserving of our 1999 Blasker Award for Environmental Science and Engineering," said Mary Walshok, acting chair of The San Diego Foundation's Science, Technology and Environment Committee. "Their years of research to understand the nuances causing the 'dead zone' in the Gulf of Mexico, as well as their extraordinary efforts to share this information with colleagues, lawmakers, the media and the public, has led to substantial contributions to water quality management and non-point source pollution education in the Mississippi River area and around the nation. Their findings have dramatically improved our understanding of the complex interactions that affect water quality and marine life in estuaries and coastal ecosystems around the country."
At the terminus of the Mississippi River is an area of increasing eutrophication (nutrient enrichment). Rabalais and Turner found that a rising overabundance of nitrates and phosphorus in the river water, linked to increasing use of fertilizers on farms in the river watershed, are carried to the Gulf of Mexico and stimulate algae production. When these algae eventually settle to the bottom waters, it deprives the bottom waters of oxygen. When the oxygen level falls below 0.1 mg/l, many organisms at the bottom of the aquatic food chain perish, leaving no support for fish and other higher forms of marine life, thus forming a mostly lifeless area commonly referred to as the "dead zone."
Rabalais and Turner, who have more than 38 years of research and 50 significant publications on Mississippi River water quality and ecosystems between them, said that the Blasker Award funds would be used for continuing research, teaching, and public outreach on water quality and pollution issues.
"What people do 800 miles away from the Gulf of Mexico directly affects the Gulf of Mexico. It's hard for many people to realize that," Rabalais said. "And the sorts of things we've found happening in the Gulf Ð- water quality changes, habitat alterations Ð- can happen to other estuaries and coastal ecosystems around the nation."
Because of this, she said, more public outreach is simply critical. "The issue of non-point source pollution would not have a national focus if we had not spent so much time talking to farm groups, talking to Congress, talking to reporters about our findings," Rabalais said. "It's a process that must continue, and the Blasker Award will greatly help our efforts."
The Blasker Award was launched through an $8 million endowment of The San Diego Foundation. The endowment was established by Samuel L. Blasker, a former aeronautical engineer for Convair in San Diego, to honor his mother, Rose Miah, and to foster scientific innovation. A 12-member, international committee of experts in the area of water research judged this year's entries.
Founded in 1975, The San Diego Foundation is a San Diego-based nonprofit public charity dedicated to promoting and increasing responsible and effective philanthropy. So far it has awarded more than $100 million in grants for community and other projects. For more information on the Blasker Awards or other San Diego Foundation programs, call (619) 235-2300.
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