ABSTRACT
A sound argument could be made to extend the ecotoxicology context even beyond the landscape scale. Often landscape studies are framed around some physical feature such as a watershed. Low dissolved oxygen (DO) environments, known as hypoxic or dead zones, occur in a wide range of aquatic systems and vary in frequency, seasonality, and persistence. While there have always been naturally occurring hypoxic habitats, such as swamps, anthropogenic activities have led to an expansion of hypoxia in habitats that have historically not had problems with low DO. Climate change, whether from general global warming or microclimate variation, will have consequences for eutrophication-related oxygen depletion that will progressively lead to an onset of hypoxic conditions earlier in the season and possibly extending it through time. Warmer water will increase organism metabolism, which is the key process for lowering oxygen concentrations. In addition to warming, future climate predictions include large changes in precipitation patterns.
