biosphere

UCSB scientists probe sea floor venting to gain understanding of early life on Earth

..., and an opportunity for researchers to sample the biosphere below the sea floor." The sides of abyssal hills are fault escarpments (or scarps) created by vertical uplift of the seafloor during many events of fault slippage that produce frequent earthquakes. The scarps are cliffs that expose and provide acces...

Family trees of ancient bacteria reveal evolutionary moves

...unctioned in a world where the oxygen level of the biosphere was much less than it is today. Over their very long life span, Cyanobacteria have evolved a system to survive a gradually increasing oxidizing environment, making them of interest to a broad range of researchers. Blank is able to draw her hypothesi...

Study reveals new technique for fingerprinting environmental samples

... accessible window into that important part of the biosphere with significant impact on the environment. DOE JGI postdoctoral fellow Susannah Green Tringe was first author on the Science paper that, in addition to other DOE JGI scientists, included collaborators from Diversa Corporation, and the European Mole...

Fighting malaria by manipulating mosquitoes' sense of smell

...uated with laboratory-reared mosquitoes in a large biosphere that simulates the natural environment. Finally, odorants that have passed all these tests will be field tested in cooperating villages near Ifakara and in The Gambia under the supervision of IHDRC and MRC Laboratories' researchers. "By combining la...

Environmental metagenomics diagnosing extreme environments, tapping opportunities for clean energy

...will also highlight advanced sensing technologies, biosphere monitoring platforms, and ecosystem forecast models for predicting the impacts of climate change. For a full session description, see: http://php.aaas.org/meetings/MPE_01.php?detail=974 "Environmental systems are extremely complex, harboring numer...

The critical importance of mangroves to ocean life

...ines, are far more important to the global ocean's biosphere than previously thought. And while the foul-smelling muddy forests may not have the scientific allure of tropical reefs or rain forests, a team of researchers has noted that the woody coastline-dwelling plants provide more than 10 percent of essentia...

Tropical forest CO2 emissions tied to nutrient increases

...ne-third of the annual exchange of CO2 between the biosphere and the atmosphere, said Cleveland. Earth's soils are believed to store several times more carbon than all of the planet's vegetation. "This is the first time anyone has taken a close look at how changes in key nutrients may alter soil CO2 emissions...

Microbe fixes nitrogen at a blistering 92 C

...he realm of where life can grow in the subseafloor biosphere and other nitrogen-limited ecosystems, perhaps even on other planets, Mehta says. Scientists have speculated since 1981 that nitrogen fixation was occurring at hydrothermal vents because vent animals had completely different nitrogen isotope ratios...

Researchers link ocean organisms with increased cloud cover and potential climate change

... Discovery of the new link between clouds and the biosphere grew out of efforts to explain increased cloud cov...ne may help reshape the way we think about how the biosphere interacts with clouds and climate," said Nenes, an assistant professor in Georgia Tech's School of E...

Puzzling plankton yield secrets to role in evolution/global photosynthesis

... process that is responsible for about half of the biosphere net primary production," said collaborator and co-author Hervé Moreau of the Pierre & Marie Curie University Oceanic Observatory in Banyuls-sur-mer, France. "This active absorption of hundreds of millions of tons of carbon per day is essential f...