WHOI in the News
The Ocean’s Hidden Fertilizer – Marine Plants Play Major Role in Phosphorus Cycling
quotes Ben Van Mooy and mentions WHOI
Ocean’s hidden fertilizer: Marine plants play major role in phosphorus cycling
ran the WHOI news release
The Ocean’s Carbon Cycle is Controlled by…Tiny Plankton?
The ocean plays a major role in the global carbon cycle. The driving force comes from tiny plankton that produce organic carbon through photosynthesis, like plants on land.
Monterey Bay: Following the DNA trail in the Pacific Ocean
As ocean acidification and climate change become the new reality, scientists wonder what will happen to the distribution and well-being of plants and animals. “Monitoring communities and ecosystems is going to be much easier done by DNA methods,” says Elizabeth Andruszkiewicz Allan, an environmental engineer at Woods Hole Oceanographic. “You take one water sample and look for everything from microbes to whales.”
Experiments Reveal How Permafrost Carbon Becomes Carbon Dioxide
Permafrost has been frozen for far longer than humans have been on the planet. That’s a good thing because permafrost contains over a trillion metric tons of organic carbon deposited by generations of plants, and all that carbon remains locked up when it’s frozen. “But now, because of human activity, it’s starting to thaw,” said Collin P. Ward, an aquatic geochemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Mass. “The big concern here is what’s going to happen to all of that organic carbon.”