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How deep in the ocean do microbes feel the effects of nutrient limitation? Microbial production in one third of the surface ocean is limited by the essential micronutrient iron (Fe). This limitation extends to at least the bottom of the euphotic zone, but what happens below that? In a study that recently published in Nature […]
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Denitrification is a crucial multi-step process for ecosystem productivity and sustainability because some of its steps can result in the loss of the essential nutrient nitrogen or the production of greenhouse gas nitrous oxide. We do not understand why microbial functional groups conducting different steps of denitrification can coexist in the ocean and why certain […]
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Biogeochemical models predict that ocean warming is weakening the vertical transport of nutrients to the upper ocean, with severe implications for marine productivity. However, nutrient concentrations across the ocean surface often fall below detection limits, making it difficult to observe long-term changes. In a recent study in PNAS, we analyzed over 30,000 nitrate and phosphate […]
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Bottom trawling, a fishing method that uses heavy nets to catch animals that live on and in the seafloor, could release a large amount of organic carbon from seafloor into the water, that metabolizes to CO2 then outgasses to the atmosphere. The magnitude of this indirect emission has been heavily debated, with estimates spanning from […]
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The global ocean dampens the anthropic CO2 increase in the atmosphere by absorbing around 25% of the carbon emitted each year. Of the processes involved in exchanges of energy and mass between ocean and atmosphere that may impact this carbon sink, rainfall has never been systematically and comprehensively quantified. A study recently published in Nature […]
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What drives carbon from the atmosphere to the deep ocean? The journey of phytoplankton-derived carbon is critical in the global carbon cycle, yet the influence of interacting bacteria in degrading lipid-rich particles during their descent has remained a mystery—until now. Using an innovative combination of nano-scale lipidomics and microscopy, researchers investigated how bacteria target and […]
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Gelatinous zooplankton comprise a widespread group of animals that are increasingly recognized as important components of pelagic ecosystems. Historically understudied, we have little knowledge of how much key taxa contribute to carbon fluxes. Likewise, there’s a critical knowledge gap of the impact of ocean change on these taxa. Appendicularia are the most abundant gelatinous zooplankton […]
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Climate change is expected to especially impact coastal zones, worsening deoxygenation in the Chesapeake Bay by reducing oxygen solubility and increasing remineralization rates of organic matter. However, simulated responses of this often fail to account for uncertainties embedded within the application of future climate scenarios. Recent research published in Biogeosciences and in Scientific Reports sought […]
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Due to a sparsity of in‐situ observations and the computational burden of eddy‐resolving global simulations, there has been little analysis on how mesoscale processes (e.g., eddies, meanders—lateral scales of 10s to 100s km) influence air‐sea CO2 fluxes from a global perspective. Recently, it became computationally feasible to implement global eddy‐resolving [O (10) km] ocean biogeochemical […]
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It has long been suggested that diatoms, microscopic algae enclosed in silica-shells, developed these structures to defend against predators like copepods, small crustaceans that graze diatoms. Copepods evolved silica-lined teeth presumably to counteract this. But actual evidence for how this predator-prey relationship may drive natural selection and evolutionary change has been lacking. A recent publication […]
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