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OCEAN SCIENCE: Ironing Out Algal Issues in the Southern Ocean
Philip Boyd
Periods of iron supply to the ocean over geological time scales may have altered climate by increasing the amount of CO2 fixed by anaemic (iron-limited) phytoplankton. In his perspective, Boyd comments on three papers (Coale et al.,Bishop et al., and Buesseler et al.) that report results from recent large-scale experiments in which ocean waters have been enriched with iron. By measuring how much carbon fixed by phytoplankton is sequestered into the abyss, the experiments test the hypothesis that enhanced iron supply leads to enhanced export of particulate organic carbon.
The author is at the National Institute of Water and Atmosphere, Department of Chemistry, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. E-mail: p.boyd{at}niwa.co.nz
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RESEARCH ARTICLES
Kenneth H. Coale, Kenneth S. Johnson, Francisco P. Chavez, Ken O. Buesseler, Richard T. Barber, Mark A. Brzezinski, William P. Cochlan, Frank J. Millero, Paul G. Falkowski, James E. Bauer, Rik H. Wanninkhof, Raphael M. Kudela, Mark A. Altabet, Burke E. Hales, Taro Takahashi, Michael R. Landry, Robert R. Bidigare, Xiujun Wang, Zanna Chase, Pete G. Strutton, Gernot E. Friederich, Maxim Y. Gorbunov, Veronica P. Lance, Anna K. Hilting, Michael R. Hiscock, Mark Demarest, William T. Hiscock, Kevin F. Sullivan, Sara J. Tanner, R. Mike Gordon, Craig N. Hunter, Virginia A. Elrod, Steve E. Fitzwater, Janice L. Jones, Sasha Tozzi, Michal Koblizek, Alice E. Roberts, Julian Herndon, Jodi Brewster, Nicolas Ladizinsky, Geoffrey Smith, David Cooper, David Timothy, Susan L. Brown, Karen E. Selph, Cecelia C. Sheridan, Benjamin S. Twining, and Zackary I. Johnson (16 April 2004) Science304 (5669), 408.
[DOI: 10.1126/science.1089778] |Abstract »|Full Text »|PDF »|Supporting Online Material »
