New NIOO publication: Long-term #nutrient load reductions and increasing #lake TN : TP stoichiometry decrease #phytoplankton biomass and #diversity in a large shallow lake. #ijsselmeer #nitrogen #phosphorus
https://doi.org/10.1002/lno.12428

Stoichiometric mismatch between #phytoplankton and #zooplankton under #climate warming and #eutrophication.

https://phys.org/news/2023-08-stoichiometric-mismatch-phytoplankton-zooplankton-climate.html

Article of the month from #LemarLab:
HIPPO #environmental #monitoring: #impact of #phytoplankton dynamics on water column chemistry and the #sclerochronology of the king scallop (Pecten maximus) as a biogenic archive for past primary production reconstructions.

https://www-iuem.univ-brest.fr/lemar/hippo-environmental-monitoring/?lang=en

Summary in French:
https://www-iuem.univ-brest.fr/lemar/surveillance-environnementale-hippo/

Work with microalgae? Did some research that involved wastewater? WE WANT TO READ ABOUT IT!

Check out this special issue in Microorganisms just for you:
https://www.mdpi.com/journal/microorganisms/special_issues/S8L390D3A9

#Microalgae #Phytoplankton #Wastewater #SpecialIssue

The abstract of this paper is the perfect example of why we need good #ScienceCommunication. An important paper, but so much jargon it’s…painful.
Key messages:
1) #phytoplankton mass in the #SouthernOcean has bloomed later & ended earlier (every year) over the past 25 years = shortening the season
2) less carbon is being taken up each year with serious implications for #ClimateChange https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-023-01768-4

Weekend #Plankton #Factoid 🦐🦠

One #Hakai video I just posted on was on Diel Vertical Migration of #zooplankton (also motile #phytoplankton). DVM is the largest movement on biomass on the planet, occurring every morning and evening in #lakes and #oceans, as much as 100s of meters (impressive for something a couple mm long). They swim up to feed on algae at night and to avoid visual predators. They also save on energy because deeper cooler water means slower metabolism.
https://youtu.be/OSCZ6athDGI?list=PLD5wTqJwsmGxI9G2B8rM7zV7TIG-mJ_c8

RT Copernicus Marine
#DYK #Phytoplankton generates5⃣0⃣% of our oxygen❓
Our #CopernicusMarine Service monitors these tiny organisms to understand their response to climate change & impact on the carbon cycle, providing essential data on ocean, atmosphere, & climate interactions🌊
🔽#Sentinel3 Image

🐦🔗: https://n.respublicae.eu/CMEMS_EU/status/1686297820343463936

“Using statistics on the distribution of the diatoms and other phytoplankton with the extra membrane throughout the global ocean, the researchers extrapolated that this boost in efficiency from the VHA membrane protein accounts for almost 12% of Earth’s atmospheric oxygen. It also contributes between 7% and 25% of all the oceanic carbon fixed each year. That’s at least 3.5 billion tons of carbon — almost four times as much as the global aviation industry emits annually. At the high end of the researchers’ estimate, VHA could be responsible for tying up as much as 13.5 billion tons of carbon a year.”

— Saugat Bolakhe, Microbes Gained Photosynthesis Superpowers From a ‘Proton Pump’, in Quanta Magazine https://www.quantamagazine.org/microbes-gained-photosynthesis-superpowers-from-a-proton-pump-20230705/

📄 Daniel P. Yee et al. The V-type ATPase enhances photosynthesis in marine phytoplankton and further links phagocytosis to symbiogenesis
🔗 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2023.05.020 (open access)

#Science #Biology #Metabolism #Diatoms #Phytoplankton #Photosynthesis #Evolution

Weekend #Plankton #Factoid 🦐🦠

You've likely heard that ½ the world's #oxygen comes from the ocean. Given #algae are only 1% of the biomass of land plants, how can that be? #Phytoplankton grow rapidly, doubling every day or so, and don't have structural elements like trunks or roots.
*But all living things respire using O2 as well (incl algae), so this % is a very long view since O2 levels have been stable for ~500 M years. #carbon

Paul Falkowski: "Power of Plankton"
https://www.nature.com/articles/483S17a

Sunday #Plankton #Factoid 🦐🦠

An important yet not well understood component of the plankton are #viruses. They are ubiquitous in all aquatic systems, infecting #zooplankton, #phytoplankton, #microbes & more. They are vital for carbon flux, algal bloom #lysis (cell death), which can lead to toxin release. As you might expect, because of their small size (often >60 nm) they are hard to sample and measure.
A story on the recently documented mirusvirus 🤓😏 here.
https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/microbiology/bizarre-never-before-seen-viruses-discovered-thriving-throughout-the-worlds-oceans

The #ocean is turning green. Yes, it’s #climatechange.
Decades worth of research showed 56% of the world’s #oceans experienced color change between 2002 to 2022. The main color-changing factor is varying populations of #phytoplankton: tiny plantlike microbes that capture and store carbon dioxide, foundation of the marine food chain. Phytoplankton contain chlorophyll and scientists can measure how much blue and green light were reflected from surface to satellites in space
https://grist.org/science/the-ocean-is-turning-green-yes-its-climate-change/

Sunday #Plankton #Factoid 🦐🦠

The story on "greening of the oceans" has been covered recently, but kudos to the Guardian on this article. The collaborative study (link in article) led by the National Oceanography Centre, Southhampton uses #MODIS satellite data from 56% of the ocean surface and a #biogeochemistry model to measure increased green colour (chlorophyll-a in #phytoplankton), esp in the temperate ocean, over the last 20 years (which is short!). #ClimateChange
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/12/worlds-oceans-changing-colour-due-to-climate-breakdown-study-suggests

The seas are turning green, but not in the way you would hope. #ClimateChange is disrupting #phytoplankton, and this is affecting the colour of our oceans.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06321-z

"The ocean’s color has changed significantly over the last 20 years, and the global trend is likely a consequence of human-induced climate change, report scientists at MIT, the National Oceanography Center in the U.K., and elsewhere". 

#climatechange #ocean #color #manmade #phytoplankton #Chlorophyll
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/995088

This student's (Alex) project is hoping to compare the association of #microplastics and #phytoplankton taxa in ambient lake water and in fish guts. What was a simple and elegant experimental design has been completely blown up by analysis problems and sampling timing issues (namely not getting enough samples).

The process of science is rarely easy and rarely do you get exactly what you set out to get. Even more so true when there is a field component.

Finally, for #ThesisThursday, updates on my student's project. We ran Lake Ontario and Lake Erie water yesterday for chlorophyll content and both measurements failed!! I've never had this happen. It's not a problem with #periphyton, only #phytoplankton. But this is twice now the normally stable rxn hasn't worked.

So, it's time for plan B - ash-free dry mass (AFDM). This is a comparatively crude measurement, but it may be all we can get! Will try the chl one more time......

Also, my senior's project is having some struggles. He's not getting as many field trips in as he'd like to get so his sample size will be smaller than we'd hoped.

Also, one of the things we were hoping to measure was the #phytoplankton in fish guts. However between the small sample size and freezing likely rupturing the few cells we'd find, this is likely to be a bust.

I've been racking my brain to think of how to salvage this metric and possible chlorophyll ratios will do the trick.

#Copernicus #OpenData help monitor & protect the marine environment
#Phytoplankton produces half of the oxygen we breathe and are also the basis of the marine food chain
#Sentinel2 🇪🇺🛰️ acquired this image of phytoplankton blooms next to offshore wind turbines in the North Sea https://t.co/rNtlKxsOqO

🐦🔗: https://n.respublicae.eu/CopernicusEU/status/1672909956369072128

Good timing:
Miriam @mseifert received the @MARUM #researchaward yesterday, and her final PhD chapter was published just in time:

Taking into account #interactive effects of multiple environmental changes can even flip the sign of primary production change until 2100 (here, this occurred for diatoms in the Southern Ocean).

Interaction matters: Bottom‐up driver interdependencies alter the projected response of #phytoplankton communities to #climate change

📄 bit.ly/3NbLB1x

Plankton Generate a Cloudy Shield over the Antarctic
--
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/plankton-generate-a-cloudy-shield-over-the-antarctic/ <-- shared technical article
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https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-1677-2023 <-- shared paper
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#GIS #spatial #mapping #watervapour #watervapor #nucleus #nucleation #cloud #whitening #climatemodels #cloudformation #clouds #weather #albedo #plankton #phytoplankton #remotesensing #satellite #MODIS #model #modeling #Antarctic #sunlight #climate #reflection #climatechange #warming #radiation #dimethylsulfide #aerosl #particles #marineboundarylayer #MBL
@noaa