MOSCOW, July 19 Decreasing oxygen levels in water pose a critical threat to nature and society on Earth, an international team of scientists said in an article for the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.
According to scientists, the level of oxygen in water turned out to be one of the so-called planetary boundaries — global ecological indicators that determine the ability of the Earth to support the existence of humanity.
«The observed deoxygenation of freshwater and marine ecosystems <…> represents another process that <…> is critical for the ecological and social systems of the Earth. <…> Rapid and persistent deoxygenation of the Earth's aquatic environments indicates that we are approaching <…> a critical threshold of oxygen content,» the article says.
As the University of California, Santa Cruz, added in a press release, since 1980, the Earth's lakes and reservoirs have lost five and 18 percent of oxygen, respectively. The seas, in turn, have lost two percent of oxygen since 1960. The huge volume of the world's oceans makes such a small loss seem large in absolute terms, the press release notes.
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