Latest Primary production Stories
University of Georgia Fish play a far more important role as contributors of nutrients to marine ecosystems than previously thought, according to researchers at the University of Georgia and Florida International University. In a pair of papers in the journal Ecology, they show that fish contribute more nutrients to their local ecosystems than any other source-enough to cause changes in the growth rates of the organisms at the base of the food web. Jacob Allgeier, a doctoral student in...
Canada Excellence Research Chair determines how marine ecosystems in the Arctic are responding to climate change Marcel Babin, Canada Excellence Research Chair in Remote Sensing of Canada's New Arctic Frontier at the Université Laval, will be discussing his research on the effects of environmental changes in the Arctic as part of an upcoming press breakfast panel discussion. The February 17 Canada Press Breakfast on the Arctic and oceans will be part of the 178th annual meeting of the...
A new insight into global photosynthesis, the chemical process governing how ocean and land plants absorb and release carbon dioxide, has been revealed in research that will assist scientists to more accurately assess future climate change. In a paper published today in Nature, a team of US, Dutch and Australian scientists have estimated that the global rate of photosynthesis, the chemical process governing the way ocean and land plants absorb and release CO2, occurs 25% faster than...
Which is more efficient at harvesting the sun's energy, plants or solar cells? This salient question and an answer are the subject of an article published in the May 13 issue of the journal Science.Although both photosynthesis and photovoltaics harvest energy from the sun, they operate in distinctly different ways producing different fuels. It is not a simple task to find common ground between the two in order to compare energy conversion efficiency."In order to make meaningful...
Patrick Lynch, NASA's Earth Science News TeamMary Cleave left the NASA astronaut corps in the early 1990s to make a rare jump from human spaceflight to Earth science. She was going to work on an upcoming mission to measure gradations in ocean color "“ something she had actually seen from low-Earth orbit with her own eyes. From space, differing densities of phytoplankton and algae and floating bits of plant life reveal themselves as so many blues and greens. For Cleave, a former...
We may be becoming an ever more technologically advanced society, but we remain as dependent as ever -- if not more and more so -- on the natural world that surrounds us.That is one takeaway from new NASA research that has found humans are using an increasing amount of the Earth's total land plant production each year for food, fiber, building and packaging materials and biofuels.This remains a young data record, as one of the first global measurements tied to satellite data was published in...
New data on photosynthesis and respiration will improve models, researchers sayTwo recent international studies are poised to change the way scientists view the crucial relationship between Earth's climate and the carbon cycle. These reports explore the global photosynthesis and respiration rates"”the planet's deep "breaths" of carbon dioxide, in and out"”and researchers say that the new findings will be used to update and improve upon traditional models that couple together...
Carbon fixation by phytoplankton in the open ocean plays a key role in the global carbon cycle but is not fully understood. Until now researchers believed that cyanobacteria overwhelmingly accounted for phytoplankton's role in carbon fixation in the open ocean. But now scientists at the University of Warwick and the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton have opened 'the black box' of eukaryotic phytoplankton and discovered that they actually account for almost half the ocean's carbon...
Results of Northwest Atlantic Field Program Could Be Applied Worldwide A three-year field program now underway is measuring carbon distributions and primary productivity in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean to help scientists worldwide determine the impacts of a changing climate on ocean biology and biogeochemistry. The study, Climate Variability on the East Coast (CliVEC), will also help validate ocean color satellite measurements and refine biogeochemistry models of ocean...
Nutrients in the AtlanticLarge-scale distributions of two important nutrient pools "“ dissolved organic nitrogen and dissolved organic phosphorus (DON and DOP) have been systematically mapped for the first time over the Atlantic Ocean in a study led by Dr Sinhue Torres-Valdes of the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton. The findings have important implications for understanding nitrogen and phosphorus biogeochemical cycles and the biological carbon pump in the Atlantic Ocean.Tiny...
