Data from Bob Diaz, a professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, Gloucester Point, are being used on a new global map created by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to highlight the connection between human population density, nutrient pollution, and low-oxygen marine dead zones.

The map was featured as the "Image of the Day" for July 17 on NASA’s Earth Observatory website, said David Malmquist, VIMS’s director of communications. That site is produced at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

The map, created by Goddard scientists Robert Simmon and Jesse Allen, combines Diaz’s dead-zone data with measurements of human population density and particulate organic carbon in marine waters, a VIMS report said. The population data was supplied by Columbia University’s Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center, Malmquist said, with data on particulate organic carbon from Goddard’s Ocean Color team. Particul...