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 in 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 environmental indicators that determine the Earth's ability to support the existence of humanity.
«Observed deoxygenation of freshwater and marine ecosystems <…> is another process <…> …> Rapid and constant deoxygenation of the Earth’s aquatic environments indicates that the oxygen content is approaching a critical threshold,” the article says.
As the American university added in a press release Santa Cruz, Earth's lakes and reservoirs have lost five and 18 percent of their oxygen, respectively, since 1980. The seas, in turn, have lost two percent of their oxygen since 1960. The huge volume of the World Ocean gives such a small loss a large scale in absolute terms, the press release notes.