{"id":175344,"date":"2022-01-12T10:36:33","date_gmt":"2022-01-12T15:36:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/?p=175344"},"modified":"2022-06-30T10:56:36","modified_gmt":"2022-06-30T14:56:36","slug":"tracking-carbon-to-the-twilight-zone-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/publications\/aboard-gso\/tracking-carbon-to-the-twilight-zone-draft\/","title":{"rendered":"Tracking Carbon to the Twilight Zone"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tracking Carbon to the Twilight Zone<\/h1>

A NASA field campaign asks: \u2018Can we see what\u2019s going on via satellite and make predictions?\u2019<\/p><\/div><\/div>

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By Todd Mcleish<\/h4>\n
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In what some scientists call one of the largest migrations on Earth, massive numbers of small fish and zooplankton travel from the ocean depths to the surface every evening to feast on phytoplankton before returning to the depths at dawn. Based on data collected by a research team led by URI professor of oceanography Melissa Omand, some zooplankton make a similar migration during the daytime as well, in response to shifts in light from cloud cover.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The discovery results from a 2018 NASA field campaign in the North Pacific called EXPORTS (Export Processes in the Ocean from Remote Sensing), which included several GSO faculty members and graduate students working on one of two collaborating research vessels simultaneously. A second EXPORTS expedition in May 2021 in the North Atlantic served to compare the carbon export pathways in the two very different ocean basins.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe North Pacific is a chronically iron-limited ocean,\u201d said Bethany Jenkins, a URI professor and one of the leaders of the project. \u201cPlanktonic life needs iron for photosynthesis, but the low iron puts a productivity constraint on the ecosystem. It limits the amount of planktonic biomass that can bloom because of the low iron conditions.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur study site in the North Atlantic undergoes a large spring phytoplankton bloom, which is much different from our site in the Pacific,\u201d she added. \u201cThere are many more gradients of ocean chemistry in the North Atlantic that influence the processes in the surface ocean. Because there are a lot of eddies, the mixing of deeper water nutrients to the surface supports larger phytoplankton blooms and potentially more carbon export.\u201d<\/p>\n

The main objective of the two EXPORTS campaigns is to examine the processes involved in the transport of carbon from the upper ocean to the dimly lit \u201ctwilight zone\u201d several hundred meters below and compare it to what NASA can observe via satellites.<\/p>\n