Spatiotemporal dynamics of coastal dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico over 20 years using remote sensing

Spreading marine dead zones (or hypoxia) are threatening coastal ecosystems and affecting billions of people's livelihoods globally. However, the lack of field observations makes it challenging to estimate dead zones with spatial precision and across large scales. While satellites offer great potential for detecting environmental changes through large-scale and temporal consistent data, they have yet to be fully integrated into the spatio-temporal dynamic mapping of hypoxia. To address this limitation, we integrated satellite imagery with field observations in random forest models on the Google Earth Engine platform to characterize dead zone dynamics from 2000 to 2019. We applied the workflow to the Gulf of Mexico, which has the largest dead zones in North America. Our model explained 64 % (± 5 %) of the variance in predicting dead zones using satellite data. The analysis revealed that dead zones in the Gulf peaked in 2009 (17,699 ± 679 km²) and contracted afterward in terms of both size and persistence (% days with hypoxia). Despite this contraction, the average size between 2010 and 2019 was twice that of the coastal reduction goal (< 5000 km²) set by the Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia Task Force. Furthermore, dead zones occurred more frequently in the western Gulf, and nearly half of the western region experienced dead zones annually. In addition to inter-annual changes, our analysis highlighted the intra-annual dynamics of this phenomenon. Notably, dead zones expanded in June, peaking in size from mid-August to early September. The high temporal and spatial resolution of this dataset allows policymakers to develop targeted management plans and environmental policies. Our approach, which incorporates remote sensing for long-term monitoring of coastal dead zones, can be applied to worldwide monitoring initiatives when paired with local field observations.