Mountains can’t be created without lubricant, and 2 billion years ago that lubricant was graphite produced by the carbon broken down from layers of dead plankton on the ocean floor.
Seabirds journey vast distances across the Earth’s seascapes to find food and to breed. This means their biology, particularly their breeding success, can reveal what’s happening in our oceans.
Mar Benavides, Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD)
In the ocean, phytoplankton helped by diazotrophs play an outstanding role in withdrawing CO₂ from the atmosphere. But climate change is disturbing this delicate balance.
Populations of plankton are in decline. If we push this critical foundation of the marine food chain to extinction, we could cripple ecosystems for millions of years.
Acidic oceans are disrupting a major part of the carbon cycle, slowing how seas absorb carbon from the atmosphere. This could massively speed up the effects of climate change.v
If the Amazon rainforest functions as our planet’s lungs, what do raging wildfires threaten? An atmospheric scientist explains why the fires, though devastating, won’t suffocate life on Earth.
Although often separated as two unique subjects in science, geology and biology have been intricately intertwined since life on Earth first evolved billions of years ago.
Fish are a key food source for millions of people worldwide. But a recent study finds long-term warming over the next 200 years could starve tiny plankton, with impacts that would ripple up food chains.