Popular phrase in science which may be you have heard of is “carbon is a building block of life. Which means all living things are made up of elements and most plentiful of which are carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, phosphorous and calcium. Out of these, carbon is the greatest at combination with other elements to structure compounds essential for life, like sugars, fats, starches and proteins. Mutually, all these forms of carbon account for roughly half of total dry mass of living things.
Not anything dies of old age in ocean. All gets consumed and all that stays of anything is waste. But that squander is pure gold to oceanographer David Siegel, director of Earth Research Institute at UC Santa Barbara. In research of ocean's role in global carbon cycle, Siegel and his colleagues used those chunks to their gain. They integrated lifecycle of phytoplankton and zooplankton-- small, frequently microscopic animals at bottom of food chain -- into new mechanistic model for considering global ocean carbon export. Their conclusion show online in a journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles.
Researchers utilized satellite observations comprising findings of net primary production (NPP) net creation of organic matter from aqueous carbon dioxide (CO2) by phytoplankton to make their food-web-based model. Scientists focused on ocean's biological pump that exports organic carbon from euphotic zone -- well-lit, Upper Ocean -- all the way through sinking particulate matter, mainly from zooplankton feces and collections of algae. Once these leave euphotic zone, sinking into ocean depths, carbon can be sequestered for season or for centuries.
What we have done here is create first step toward observing strength and efficiency of biological pump by using satellite observations, said Siegel, who is a professor of marine science in UCSB's Department of Geography. Approach is exclusive in that preceding ways have been experimental without taking into consideration dynamics of ocean food web. Space or time patterns made by those empirical approaches are not consistent with how oceanographers believe oceans must work, he noted.
Carbon is there in atmosphere and is accumulated in oceans, soils and Earth's crust. Any movement of carbon between or in case of ocean, in these reservoirs is known as a flux. According to researchers, oceans are essential component in global carbon cycle in the course of their transformations, transport and storage of carbon constituents.
Enumerating this carbon flux is significant for forecasting atmosphere's response to varying climates," Siegel said. "By examining scattering signals which we received from satellite measurements of ocean's colour, we were capable to create techniques to compute how much of biomass happens in very large or very small particles."
Their consequences forecast mean global carbon export flux of 6 petagrams (Pg) per year. Also called as gigaton, a petagram is equivalent to one quadrillion (1015) grams. This is a enormous amount, approximately equal to annual global emissions of fossil fuel. At the present time, fossil fuel combustion signifies a flux to atmosphere of roughly 9 Pg per year.
"It matters how big and small plankton is, and it matters what energy flows are in food web," Siegel said. "This is so easy It is in fact who consumes whom but also having the idea of biomasses and productivity of each. So we found out these highly developed methods of finding NPP, phytoplankton biomass and size structure to devise mass budgets, all deduced from satellite data."
Researchers are taking their model one step ahead by scheduling the major field program developed to better understand states in which biological pump works. "Knowing biological pump is crucial," Siegel said. "We require understanding where carbon goes off, how much of it leaves into a organic matter, how that influences air-sea exchanges of CO2 and what occurs to fossil fuel we have produced from our tailpipes."