Iron biogeochemistry across marine systems progress from the past decade

Based on an international workshop (Gothenburg, 14–16 May 2008), this review article aims to combine interdisciplinary knowledge from coastal and open ocean research on iron biogeochemistry. The major scientific findings of the past decade are structured into sections on natural and artificial iron fertilization, iron inputs into coastal and estuarine systems, colloidal iron and organic matter, and biological processes. Potential effects of global climate change, particularly ocean acidification, on iron biogeochemistry are discussed. The findings are synthesized into recommendations for future research areas

Statistical Mechanics of Horizontal Gene Transfer in Evolutionary Ecology

The biological world, especially its majority microbial component, is strongly interacting and may be dominated by collective effects. In this review, we provide a brief introduction for statistical physicists of the way in which living cells communicate genetically through transferred genes, as well as the ways in which they can reorganize their genomes in response to environmental pressure. We discuss how genome evolution can be thought of as related to the physical phenomenon of annealing, and describe the sense in which genomes can be said to exhibit an analogue of information entropy. As a direct application of these ideas, we analyze the variation with ocean depth of transposons in marine microbial genomes, predicting trends that are consistent with recent observations using metagenomic surveys.Comment: Accepted by Journal of Statistical Physic

Year Round survey of Ocean-Sea Ice-Air Exchanges – the YROSIAE survey

YROSIAE survey aimed to carry out a year-round survey of land-fast sea ice focusing on the study of sea ice physics and biogeochemistry in order to a) better understand and budget exchanges of energy and matter across the ocean-sea ice-atmosphere interfaces during sea ice growth and decay and b) quantify their potential impact on fluxes of climate gases (CO2, DMS, CH4, N2O) to the atmosphere and on carbon and macro- nutrients and micro-nutrients export to the ocean. Ice cores, sea water, brines and exported material were collected at regular intervals about 1 km off cape Evans from November 2011 to December 2011 and from September 2012 to December 2012 in trace-metal clean conditions. Samples are processed to characterize both the vertical distribution and temporal changes of climate gases (CO2, DMS, CH4, N2O), CO2-related parameters (dissolved inorganic carbon, total alkalinity and CaCO3 amount), physical parameters (salinity, temperature, texture, 18O), biogeochemical parameters (macro-nutrients, particulate and dissolved organic carbon, δ13C, δ30Si and δ15N, micro-nutrients - including iron) and biological parameters ( chlorophyll a, primary production within sea ice derived from O2:Ar and O2:N ratios, autotrophic species determination, bacterial cell counts a.s.o.). In addition, we deployed a micro-meterological tower and automatic chambers to measure air-ice CO2 fluxes. Continuous measurements of ice temperature and ice accretion or melting, both at the ice-ocean and the ice-atmosphere interfaces were provided by an “Ice-T” ice mass balance buoy. Sediment traps collected particles below the ice between 10 and 70 m, while dust collectors provided a record of a full suite of trace metal and dust at different levels above the ground. We will present the aims, overall approach and sampling strategy of the YROSIAE survey. In addition we will also discuss CO2 dynamics within the ice and present temporal air-ice CO2 fluxes over the year. We will provide a first budget of air-ice CO2 fluxes during ice growth for Antarctica sea ice and discuss the impact of the snow cover on air-ice CO2 fluxes.Bigsouth, Yrsoia

Iron biogeochemistry across marine systems at changing times - conclusions from the workshop held in Gothenburg, Sweden (14-16 May 2008)

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe