Biosphere in Biological News

Deep biosphere research points to new methods for recovering petroleum

... Although the biological diversity of these deep biosphere microorganisms may surpass that of the more ... time-scales and at Earth's surface. Deep biosphere microbes, like any living organism, require ... matter, including the direct involvement of deep biosphere microbes. That deeply buried organic material is ...

Nature publishes new evidence about the deep biosphere written by biogeoscientists

... concluded that about 87 percent of the deep biosphere consists of Archaea. This finding is in stark ... cell membranes. To date, estimations of the deep biosphere biomass range from about 60 to 300 billion tons ... techniques used to detect biomass in the deep biosphere arrive at different conclusions regarding ...

Univ. of Arizona receives $2.5 million to study Amazon forests and climate change

... within the tropical forest biome at UA's biosphere 2 and work with Brazilian scientists and students ... change globally," said Saleska, also a member of biosphere 2's science steering committee member and of UA's ... researchers participating in the project include biosphere 2 Director Travis Huxman, an associate professor ...

BBVA Foundation Awards for Biodiversity Conservation

... Gorda "for demonstrating with their Management Program of the Sierra Gorda biosphere Reserve that biodiversity conservation", in the words of the jury, ... Government and civil society for the management of the Sierra Gorda biosphere Reserve; the protected space with the richest ecological diversity in all ...

Otters reveal their identity

... on the otter population in the heath and pond region of the Oberlausitz biosphere Reserve. Genetic analyses of the faeces could prove to be a promising ... the otter population in the heath and pond region of the Oberlausitz biosphere Reserve to be anything between 200 and 600 individuals. "The State of ...

'Barren' seafloor teeming with microbial life

... other objects, Edwards suggested. Still, current knowledge of the deep biosphere can fit on the head of a pin, Edwards said. Most seafloor bacteria ... described by Edwards as the co-evolution of Earth and life. The deep biosphere is uniquely suited for a geobiological approach, Edwards said, since a ...

Finding God with biocomplexity

... are no natural laws that can fully explain the evolution of a species, the biosphere or the human economy, says Kauffman, a pioneer of complexity theory and ... lack sufficient knowledge or wisdom to predict the future evolution of the biosphere or human culture. Its that these things are inherently unpredictable ...

Harold Mooney and Peter Raven, winners of the BBVA Foundation Award for Conservation Biology

... by non-profit organizations to the Management Program of the Sierra Gorda biosphere Reserve, led by Grupo Ecolgico Sierra Gorda, for demonstrating that ... Government and civil society for the management of the Sierra Gorda biosphere Reserve; the protected space with the richest ecological diversity in all ...

The conservation lens

... This is part of what inspired the creation of the worlds southernmost biosphere reserve. The designation of the Cape Horn biosphere Reserve (CHB) by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and ...

Rampant helper syndrome

... for such species. "We have now shown that this picture is not entirely true," Carell says. "This cofactor is significantly more widespread in the biosphere than previously assumed. Most importantly, it also occurs in higher organisms, the so-called eukaryotes. But in these, it performs a completely ...

Global sunscreen won't save corals

... planet's ozone layer, or have other unexpected effects. Until the current study, which used a computer model of the Earth's climate system and biosphere to simulate the effect of geoengineering on climate and the ocean's chemistry, the potential impact of such a scheme on ocean acidification had never ...

New cleaning protocol for future 'search for life' missions

... of AMASE and was funded by a NASA ASTEP award to co-author Andrew Steele at the Carnegie Institution of Washington and grants from the Earth and biosphere Institute at the University of Leeds to Liane G. Benning. ...

NASA Earth system science meeting celebrates 20 years of discovery

... the groundwork for advances in global climate change and understanding natural and human-induced changes in the land surface, atmosphere, oceans, biosphere and Earth's interior that affect all aspects of life. ...

Genetic adaptations key to microbe's survival in challenging environment

... on early Earth. Nautilia profundicola contains all the genes necessary for life in conditions widely believed to mimic those in our planet's early biosphere and could aid in understanding of how life evolved. "It will be an important model system," Campbell said, "for understanding early microbial ...

Ocean research officials hail completion of modernization for US scientific ocean drilling vessel

... science with a vastly improved capability for performing cutting-edge research into the secrets of Earth's past climate, past ocean conditions, deep biosphere and interior," says Tim Killeen, NSF assistant director for geosciences. "NSF congratulates all involved in the successful refit and modernization of ...

Eight ASU faculty elected as AAAS Fellows

... AAAS for "pioneering work in developing the theories of ecological and biological stoichiometry to integrate levels of biology from the genome to the biosphere and thereby improve our management of renewable resources." Elser, a professor in the School of Life Sciences, has built a career asking questions ...

Europe cores in EUROCORES: Ocean drilling in EuroMARC

... changes. Current ocean dynamics and sediment fluxes are investigated with the help of sediment traps, and hydrothermal processes of deep biosphere at mid ocean ridges get explored. But how does coring work and what is actually done on the cruises? International marine coring expeditions are ...

Corralling the carbon cycle

... overcome a major hurdle to calculating how much carbon dioxide (CO2) is absorbed and released by plants, vital information for understanding how the biosphere responds to stress and for determining the amount of carbon that can be safely emitted by human activities. The problem is that ecosystems ...

'Arid aquaculture' among livelihoods promoted to relieve worsening pressure on world's drylands

... researchers with the United Nations University, the International Centre on Agricultural Research in Dryland Areas (ICARDA), and UNESCO's Man and the biosphere (MAB) Program say alternatives to traditional crop farming and livestock rearing will need to be put in place in drylands in order to mitigate human ...

Ecologists say metabolism accounts for why natural selection favors only some species

... we studied," said Bai-Lian Li , a professor of ecology at UC Riverside, who led the study along with two colleagues. "At physiological rest, the biosphere appears to run, on average, predominantly at the optimal rate defined by this narrow range of values. This remarkable phenomenon is likely associated ...

Northwest climate change is target of $3.2M in grants to University of Oregon

... Bolte, head of OSU's department of biological and ecological engineering, and Ron Neilson, a Forest Service climate modeler and courtesy professor of biosphere modeling at OSU. Bolte received $300,000 under the grant. Students from several different disciplines will have roles in the research. "What we ...

Barcelona Declaration 2008: Challenges and Pathways to Earth Sustainability

... to Earth Sustainability The coming three decades will determine whether the population of the world comes into balance with the capacity of the biosphere to support it, or whether catastrophic changes in the environment brought on by climate change, losses of biodiversity, pollution of air and water, ...

As Andean glacier retreats, tiny life forms swiftly move in, CU-Boulder study shows

... to be similar to those on portions of Mars. "This kind of research should help us understand how the cold regions of Earth function, and how the biosphere will respond to future climate change," said Schmidt. The research also could lead to the discovery of new antibiotics, as well as industrial ...

Water: stressed-out and overheated

... salinity. Fresh waters are also highly sensitive to climate change which now exacerbates all these other problems. With the sustainability of the biosphere and the needs of billions of people at risk, there is an urgent scientific challenge to understand the problems and seek long-term solutions. Now, ...

Ancient oak trees help reduce global warming

... associate in the MU Department of Forestry. "The goal is to increase our knowledge of the carbon cycle, particularly its exchange between the biosphere (plants) and atmosphere. We need to know where it goes and for how long in order to know how to offset its effects." This could be a valuable find ...

Scientists may have solved an ecological riddle

... model, which should help scientists to better predict the effect of climate change on different ecosystems and the interactions between terrestrial biosphere and climate change at decadal-to-century time scales," Dr Wang says. ...

Study finds healthy intestinal bacteria within chicken eggs

... in a dish. "Previous assumptions were based on the use of cell cultures," Pedroso said, "but we now know that only 1 percent of bacteria in the biosphere can be cultured." ...

Key molecule discovered in Venus's atmosphere

... the heating and dynamics of a planets atmosphere. On Earth, it heats the stratosphere (layer of the atmosphere) making it stable and protecting the biosphere from harmful ultraviolet rays. Computer models will now be able to tell how this jump and drop in ozone levels over short intervals affects the ...

Is there anybody out there?

... will be only about another billion years, a short time compared to the four billion years since life first appeared on the planet. The Earths biosphere is now in its old age and this has implications for our understanding of the likelihood of complex life and intelligence arising on any given planet, ...

USC awarded $3.9M for lab under the sea

... the earth and life sciences, a key goal in the emerging field of geobiology, described by Edwards as the co-evolution of Earth and life. The deep biosphere is uniquely suited for a geobiological approach, Edwards said, since a proper understanding requires genomics, analysis of microbe-rock chemical ...

Managing uncertainty important in ecological balance: ASU researcher

... Still others have more nuanced viewpoints or inconsistent perceptions. The condition of the natural world is not an either-or proposition the biosphere is never perfectly balanced or wholly poised on the brink of a precipitous crash, Kinzig says. It can be at once robust and fragile, stable and ...

Deep-sea species' loss could lead to oceans' collapse, study suggests

... and food) and, for their profound involvement in global biogeochemical and ecological processes, are essential for the sustainable functioning of our biosphere and for human wellbeing, the researchers concluded. Our results suggest that the conservation of deep-sea biodiversity can be crucial for the ...

New light trap captures larval stage of new species; DNA barcode technology used

... in the deep tropical waters surrounding Banco Chinchorro, a remote coral reef atoll off Mexicos Costa Maya which was recently designated as a Marine biosphere Reserve. The traps capture fish larvae in a manner similar to a fishermans minnow trap, but attract them with a programmable lighting system enclosed ...

Researchers detect hint of oxygen 50 to 100 million years earlier than first believed

... and its relationship to the early evolution of life. This is the earliest convincing record for an ephemeral accumulation of oxygen in the biosphere before its irreversible rise beginning 2.4 billion years ago, said Lyons , a professor of biogeochemistry. Scott, a graduate student working with ...

Scientists launch deep-sea scientific drilling program to study volatile earthquake zone

... vessel and European mission-specific platforms, which also support IODP scientific investigations, and that have investigated the subseafloor biosphere and Earth's dynamic climate with great success." The full range of NanTroSEIZE investigations will occur in four stages: Stage 1, now ...

LSU professor looks for life in and under antarctic ice

... and most of these bodies of water have likely been covered by ice for at least 15 million years. The environmental conditions in the deep cold biosphere are unlike anything on the Earths surface and this represents one of the most extreme habitats for life on the planet. A timeframe of up to one ...

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

... away from our planet. Discovery of the new link between clouds and the biosphere grew out of efforts to explain increased cloud cover observed over an area ... "Studies like this one may help reshape the way we think about how the biosphere interacts with clouds and climate," said Nenes, an assistant professor in ...

Puzzling plankton yield secrets to role in evolution/global photosynthesis

... for biologists." "Assimilation of atmospheric CO2 by marine phytoplankton is a global-scale 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 ...

Scientists discover new species of distinctive cloud-forest rodent

... both available to the media. The authors of the study found the rodent in 1999 while conducting field research in Peru's Manu National Park and biosphere Reserve Mountains in Southern Peru along the eastern slope of the Andes. Extending from lowland tropical forests in the Amazon Basin to open ...