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Home in the Cold

WHOI researchers called the edge of a Greenland glacier home for seven weeks during a 2008 expedition funded by the WHOI Arctic Research Initiative. Maya Bhatia and colleagues revealed in Nature Geoscience in March that glaciers may contribute significant amounts of the nutrient iron to the North Atlantic Ocean. As climate changes, these excess inputs may stimulate plankton growth during spring and summer. The research team collected samples from sites at three glaciers on the western edge of the Greenland ice sheet. During the study, Bhatia was a student in the WHOI/MIT Joint Program.(Photo by Matt Charette, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)