The article reports on the importance of climate change and the changing agricultural practices on nitrate-N loadings to the Gulf of Mexico, which is experiencing apoxia, from the Mississippi River. The authors state that the increasing nitrate-N export from agricultural areas in the upper Midwest since the 1960s resulted from wet climates, as simulated by the Agricultural Drainage and Pesticide Transport (ADAPT) model. They add that if the climate remained constant, discharges from the watershed would have been reduced due to significant improvements in crop yield.