{"id":1426,"date":"2020-12-14T13:41:37","date_gmt":"2020-12-14T18:41:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rynearson-lab-draft\/?p=1426"},"modified":"2021-08-16T09:45:49","modified_gmt":"2021-08-16T13:45:49","slug":"zooplankton-grazing-and-carbon-flux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rynearson-lab\/zooplankton-grazing-and-carbon-flux\/","title":{"rendered":"Zooplankton Grazing and Carbon Flux"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Zooplankton grazing in the ocean intimately influences the biomass of phytoplankton, the cycling of organic carbon and nutrients in marine waters and their population sizes and nutritional status. This in turn influences the productivity of their predators, ultimately influencing the abundance of commercially important fish species. It has been challenging to accurately identify rates of zooplankton grazing and connecting those grazing activities to carbon flux, either through the food web or to the deep ocean.\u00a0 We are using a variety of molecular and bioinformatics techniques to address these challenges. Current funding focuses on microzooplankton grazing and comes from NASA as part of the large-scale, multi-investigator EXPORTS project (EXport Processes in the Ocean from RemoTe Sensing).\u00a0 This research has taken the lab to the Bering Sea, the Southern Ocean, the North Pacific and the North Atlantic.\u00a0 In addition to NASA, this part of Rynearson Lab research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the RI Science and Technology Council. <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rynearson-lab\/micro-and-meso-zooplankton-grazing\/\" target=\"_blank\">Click here for related publications.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1985\/about-EXPORTS.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><figcaption>Schematic for the sampling program on the NASA EXPORTS project.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>EXPORTS:<\/strong> <strong>Expedition Probes Ocean\u2019s Smallest Organisms for Climate Answers<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Satellite images of phytoplankton blooms on the surface of the ocean often dazzle with their diverse colors, shades and shapes. But phytoplankton are more than just nature\u2019s watercolors: They play a key role in Earth\u2019s climate by removing heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. Yet a detailed account of what becomes of that carbon \u2014 how much of it goes where within the Earth and for how long \u2014 has beset scientists for decades. So while NASA\u2019s Earth-observing satellites can detect the proliferation and location of these organisms, the precise implications of their life and death cycles on the climate are still unknown. To answer those questions, a large multidisciplinary team of scientists sailed on Aug 10th, 2018 to a point 200 miles west from Seattle into the northeastern Pacific Ocean with advanced underwater robotics and other instruments on a month-long campaign to investigate the secret lives of these plantlike organisms and the animals that eat them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>More info on EXPORTS <a href=\"https:\/\/oceanexports.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Click <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.nasa.gov\/earthexpeditions\/tag\/exports\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a> to check out the EXPORTS expedition blog as well as three blog <a href=\"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/news\/pursuing-ocean-science-in-the-midst-of-a-global-pandemic\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">posts<\/a> written by Rynearson Lab graduate student, Diana Fontaine, who participated on the research cruise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/NASAOcean\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Tweets by @NASAOcean<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Zooplankton grazing in the ocean intimately influences the biomass of phytoplankton, the cycling of organic carbon and nutrients in marine waters and their population sizes and nutritional status. This in turn influences the productivity of their predators, ultimately influencing the abundance of commercially important fish species. It has been challenging to accurately identify rates of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4037,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-projects"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rynearson-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rynearson-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rynearson-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rynearson-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4037"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rynearson-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1426"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rynearson-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2629,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rynearson-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1426\/revisions\/2629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rynearson-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rynearson-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rynearson-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}