A new study has said that the oxygen dissolved in the world’s waters is rapidly decreasing, posing one of the biggest risks to the Earth’s life support system. The reason, cited by the team of scientists from the United States, said that this is happening due to climate change and greenhouse gas emissions, Science Alert reported. Warmer water contains less oxygen, which is a fundamental problem for aquatic life that depends on dissolved oxygen for survival, just as atmospheric oxygen is extremely important to humans and animals.
The research team wants oxygen loss in water to be added to the list of ‘planetary boundaries’, thresholds within which humanity can develop and flourish.
To date, there are nine planetary boundaries: climate change, ocean acidification, stratospheric ozone depletion, disruption of global phosphorus and nitrogen cycles, rate of biodiversity loss, global freshwater use, land system change, aerosol loading, and chemical pollution.
“The observed oxygen loss from Earth’s freshwater and marine ecosystems represents an additional planetary boundary process that is critical to the integrity of Earth’s ecological and social systems. Moreover, it regulates and responds to ongoing changes in other planetary boundary processes,” the scientists said in the study.
“Relevant, critical oxygen thresholds are being reached at rates comparable to other planetary boundary processes,” they further wrote.
Other causes for the rapid decrease in oxygen in the water are the increase in algae and bacteria due to the influx of organic matter and nutrients in the form of agricultural and household fertilizers, sewage and industrial waste.
If oxygen levels drop to alarming levels, even microbes that do not depend on oxygen will die.
The research was published in Nature Ecology & Evolution.
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