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14 January 2020
Microbes endure a variety of inhospitable conditions in California’s Mono Lake
Microbes found across distinct layers in California’s Mono Lake may be surviving by using a variety of carbohydrates for energy, according to a recent study. New research presented last month describes bacteria that thrive in the inhospitable lake across a variety of nutrient conditions. Researchers predict that these bacteria, which express more carbohydrate utilization genes than their competitors, succeed by being able to adapt to use available energy sources. The research helps scientists understand how bacteria survive in extreme environments as well as how bacterial communities shift following changes in nutrient levels.
28 March 2018
Study reveals potential stability of ocean processes despite climate change
In a new study published in Global Biogeochemical Cycles, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, Pearse Buchanan, a scientist at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies at the University of Tasmania, and his team integrated new, dynamic ways of representing marine ecosystem processes in ocean models. In applying them, they found that a more realistic representation of the marine ecosystem helped the ocean to take up and store carbon at similar rates regardless of global changes in physical properties, like temperature, salinity and circulation.
7 April 2017
Scientists uncover isotopic fingerprint of nitrous oxide emissions from Arctic tundra
A new study presents, for the first time, the isotopic fingerprint of nitrous oxide produced by Arctic soils. The finding opens new avenues for predicting future trends in atmospheric nitrous oxide as well as in identifying climate change mitigation actions in the Arctic, a region that is particularly sensitive to climate change.
27 September 2016
New research explores how wetlands and agriculture could be causing a global rise in methane
New research shows recent rises in methane levels in the atmosphere are most likely driven by biological sources, such as swamp gas, cow burps, or rice fields, rather than fossil fuel emissions.
15 July 2016
Drought caused the Amazon to stop storing carbon
The most extensive land-based study of the effect of drought on Amazonian rainforests to date has shown that a recent drought completely shut down the Amazon Basin’s carbon sink. Previous research has suggested that the Amazon – the most extensive tropical forest on Earth – may be gradually losing its capacity to take carbon from the atmosphere. This new study paints a more complex picture, with forests responding dynamically to an increasingly variable climate.
13 October 2015
New research identifies areas of global ocean most vulnerable to ocean acidification
New research maps the distribution of aragonite saturation state in both surface and subsurface waters of the global ocean and provides further evidence that ocean acidification is happening on a global scale. The study identifies the Arctic and Antarctic oceans, and the upwelling ocean waters off the west coasts of North America, South America and Africa as regions that are especially vulnerable to ocean acidification.