What Is (Are) The Source(S) Of The Increase? Choose All That Apply. Choose All That Apply.

Oceans and the Carbon Cycle

Role A: Down to the Deep - The Ocean'due south Biological Pump

Oceans have a large capacity to absorb CO₂, thus reducing the corporeality of CO₂in the temper and bringing carbon atoms into the body of water organization. Many CO_ii molecules that diffuse into sea surface waters lengthened back to the atmosphere on very curt fourth dimension scales. However, some of the carbon atoms from these original CO₂ molecules stay in the body of water for fourth dimension scales of hundreds to thousands of years. If some carbon atoms eventually make it to the bottom of the body of water sediment, they tin can be stored for fourth dimension scales of millions of years.

In this Lab, you will acquire nigh the capacity of the ocean carbon cycle to blot, send, transform and store carbon. Important questions you will investigate will be:

How does carbon go into the bounding main and what happens to information technology in one case there?
How does the ocean carbon bike compare with the terrestrial carbon cycle?
How does carbon get transported down to deep ocean sediments? Which organisms are involved?

Allow's begin by looking at the detailed illustration of the bounding main carbon cycle on the right. Click to enlarge. Although quite complex, you volition meet carbon cycle processes and biosphere components similiar to those yous learned almost when yous studied the terrestrial carbon cycle in prior Labs.

Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the ocean carbon cycle illustration and respond the questions below.

Hash out

What processes exercise yous meet that are the same in the terrestrial carbon bicycle?
What organism brings CO₂ into ocean carbon bicycle? By what process?
What types of small organisms also found in the terrestrial carbon cycle announced to play a key role in the body of water carbon bike?

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) diffuses into the ocean carbon cycle via the air-sea surface exchange

Molecules of CO₂ enter the body of water by diffusing into the sea surface waters and dissolving—a physio-chemical process. The corporeality of CO_two that diffuses and dissolves in the bounding main surface water depends on variables such as wind, ocean surface mixing, concentrations of CO₂, and the temperature of the water.

Accept a few minutes to closely examine the image below. This epitome represents the movement (flux) of CO₂ into and out of the sea surface of the bounding main.
- Imperial to blueish colors bespeak areas of the ocean where more CO₂ is diffusing into sea surface h2o than is diffusing from sea surface water out to the atmosphere. Thus, these areas are acting as a carbon sink.
- Dark-green colors indicate that the movement of CO₂ into and out of the body of water is fairly equal.
- Yellow to red colors indicate areas of the ocean where more more CO_ii is diffusing out to the atmosphere than is diffusing into sea surface water. Thus, this area is acting as a carbon source to the temper.
And then, answer the Checking In questions.

Checking In

In one case dissolved in surface seawater, CO₂ tin enter into the ocean carbon cycle through iii different mechanisms:

The concrete carbon pump
The biological carbon pump
The carbonate pump

In the physical carbon pump, carbon compounds tin can exist transported to unlike parts of the ocean in downwelling and upwelling currents

Downwelling occurs when surface waters converge (come together), pushing the surface water downward; regions of low primary productivity because nutrients become used upwards and are not continuously resupplied past the cold, nutrient-rich water from beneath the surface. currents occur in areas where cold, denser water sinks. These downwelling currents bring dissolved CO₂ down to the deep sea. One time there, the CO₂ moves into slow-moving deep body of water currents staying there for hundreds of years.

Eventually, these deep ocean currents return to the surface in a process called upwelling . Upwelling currents occur when surface waters diverge (move apart), enabling up motility of h2o; bring water to the surface that is enriched with nutrients of import for primary productivity (phytoplankton growth) that in plow supports richly productive marine ecosystems. . Many upwelling currents occur along coastlines. When upwelling currents bring deep, cold bounding main h2o to the surface, the water warms and some of the dissolved CO₂ is released back to the atmosphere. Downwelling and upwelling currents are of import components of the deep ocean conveyor chugalug and are of import in physically transporting carbon compounds to unlike parts of the oceans.

Sentry the NASA video below that animates ocean currents. As you lookout the video, visualize carbon compounds moving along with these currents.
Next, examine the image beneath of the "Sea'due south Conveyor Belt of Deep Ocean and Surface Currents." Await for areas where currents are sinking and rising.

Discuss

Re-examine the Ocean CO₂ flux map and compare it to the Deep Ocean Conveyor Chugalug Map in the image above.

What patterns if any, do you meet that are the same in both maps.
Explicate how a CO₂ molecule that diffuses into the bounding main in the North Atlantic ocean could eventually diffuse into the atmosphere off the eastern coast of Africa hundreds of years subsequently.

Finish and Call back

i: Draw the concrete pump's role in enabling the body of water to be a carbon sink.

Phytoplankton are pocket-size photosynthetic organisms that move carbon into the oceanic biological pump

The oceanic biological carbon pump is driven past organisms that live in the ocean. Just like the terrestrial carbon cycle, the oceanic biological carbon pump is all about photosynthesizing, respiring, eating, producing waste products, dying and decomposing. The biological pump plays a major function in:

transforming carbon compounds into new forms of carbon compounds
moving carbon throughout the body of water
moving carbon down to sea floor sediments

Phytoplankton more often than not microscopic, unicellular photosynthetic organisms that alive in the upper sunlit layers of oceans and other bodies of water; mainly unicellular algae but also includes cyanobacteria. (Greek for drifting plants) are microscopic, one-celled organisms that drift in the sunlit surface areas of the globe'due south oceans and are key to bringing carbon down into the sea biological pump from the atmosphere via the process of photosynthesis.

Merely like land plants, phytoplankton utilize chlorophyll and other photosynthetic pigments to capture Sunday'due south energy for photosynthesis. Using light energy from the Sun, carbon dioxide, and important ocean nutrients such equally nitrogen, phosphorus, iron and vitamin B, they convert the carbon dioxide and water into sugars and other carbon compounds. These carbon compounds enter the marine food spider web and some carbon eventually ends upward in deep ocean currents and seafloor sediments. Phytoplankton return CO_two and O₂ to the atmosphere when they respire. Over l% of the world'due south oxygen needed by us to exhale is produced by phytoplankton.

Discuss

Await at the simplified image of the oceanic biological carbon pump higher up right.

Depict a carbon pathway that moves carbon compounds between the ii reservoirs (ocean and atmosphere)in the shortest timescale.
Draw a carbon pathway that would move carbon atoms from the temper to a identify where they would be stored for millions of years.

Sea food webs —move the carbon effectually the body of water's biological pump

Phytoplankton are responsible for bringing carbon into the sea planktonic nutrient spider web which teems with small plankton as seen in this TedEd video, "The Secret Life of Plankton." As you watch the video, make note of:

different types and size of phytoplankton and zooplankton
feeding relationships that would laissez passer carbon through members of the ocean food spider web

The Secret Life of Plankton

Once in the food web, of import food spider web processes such as feeding, producing waste product products, dying and decomposing move carbon downwards into the twilight and deep zones in the ocean. When plankton and larger marine organisms eat, defecate, dice and decompose, they produce sinking carbon-containing particles called marine snowfall.

Getting carbon into the sea is one matter—getting information technology down to the deep ocean is some other!

Nigh l Gt (50 billion metric tons) of carbon is drawn down into the biological pump per year simply only a small fraction of this carbon makes its way down into the deep bounding main. (2007 IPCC Report).

What happens to the carbon as it moves downward through the biological pump?
What is the role of the "microbial loop" in moving that carbon?
How much carbon really makes it downward to the deep ocean and why is this of import?

To answer these questions, you lot will visit an interactive developed past Forest Pigsty Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) and so watch a video on the sea's microbial loop.

Begin by visiting the interactive Carbon in the Ocean. On the home page, click the dark-green Ocean button.
Click through and read each of the slides: Dissolved Gas, Plants, Animals, Detritus, Deep Body of water, and Humans. Accept annotation of the arrows indicating timescales for the changes. Run across if you tin can follow the carbon as it moves from phytoplankton to the depths of the ocean. As y'all move through the WHOI interactive, pay conscientious attention to the role of the microbes and zooplankton in moving carbon to the deep ocean.
Next, watch the video below on the sea's microbial loop. As you watch, make note of:

the ecological role of microbes in the ocean food spider web
the role of microbes and the microbial loop in reducing the amount of carbon that eventually makes its way down to the bottom of the ocean.

The Bounding main's Microbial Loop

Discuss

Equally the carbon moves downward through the biological pump, less and less carbon actually makes information technology down into the deep bounding main. How practise microbes and zooplankton reduce the amount of carbon that eventually sinks to the body of water bottom?
Why are particles such as detritus, sometimes called marine snowfall, then important in bringing carbon downwardly into the twilight and deep sea zones?

The sea carbonate system is essential to marine organisms such as coral, oysters, clams and lobsters edifice their shells

The ocean naturally contains many dissolved chemicals which are especially important to the bounding main carbon wheel and the crush-edifice organisms that live in the oceans. The body of water carbonate system is linked to the biological pump and plays a very big function in transporting carbon downwards to deep ocean sediments where it is stored for very long time scales of millions of years.

When CO₂ dissolves in the ocean, it combines with water molecules and and then enters into a series of reversible chemical reactions that produce bicarbonate ions(H⁺CO_three ^-), hydrogen ions (H+) and carbonate (CO₃ ^2-) ions. The carbonate ions are especially important to marine organisms because they combine with calcium ions (Ca₂ ⁺) to form calcium carbonate (CaCO_iii). Shell-building organisms such as coral, oysters, lobsters, pteropods, sea urchins, and some species of plankton utilize calcium carbonate to build their shells, plates and inner skeletons.

Hash out

Examine the epitome of the ocean carbonate system above right and so trace the pathway of carbon atoms from CO_ii molecules to calcium carbonate (CaCO_three) molecules. Now, take a large jiff and then exhale. Depict how carbon atoms from the CO₂you exhaled could stop upwards in the shells of a shell-building organism such as a lobster or mollusk.

Checking In

Microscopic shells of coccolithophore and foraminifera

Provenance: Coccolithophore - Allison R Taylor (University of Northward Carolina Microscopy Facility) Micrograph of Foraminifera courtesy of Lynn M. Hansen, Groovy Valley Museum, Modeasto California.
Reuse: This item is offered nether a Artistic Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/three.0/ You may reuse this item for non-commercial purposes equally long every bit you provide attribution and offer whatever derivative works under a like license.

Sinking shells bring carbon down to the deep ocean

When shell-builders die and sink, the carbon in their shells is transported downwards to the deep ocean where the carbon can become function of deep body of water currents and seafloor sediments. Many shells dissolve before reaching the seafloor sediments, a procedure that releases CO₂into deep ocean currents. Shells that do not dissolve build upward slowly on the body of water floor forming calcium carbonate (CaCO₃) sediments. Eventually, tectonic processes of loftier rut and pressure transform these sediments into limestone. This procedure locks massive amounts of carbon abroad for millions of years.

Some of the smallest vanquish-builders send the most carbon down to seafloor sediments. Microscopic shell-building unicelluar coccolithophores tiny unicellular marine phytoplankton that live in large numbers throughout the upper layers of the ocean; build outer plates (shells) of limestone calcium carbonate(CaCO_three) and foraminifera by and large microscopic, unicellular amoeboid protists that alive in the body of water; produce shells of organic material, sediment grains, or calcium carbonate; tin can be institute in just about every marine environment from the deep body of water to shallow reefs, cached in sediment or floating in the h2o column. reproduce quickly when nutrients are available. When nutrients have been used up, trillions of these tiny crush-builders die and sink, bringing carbon downwardly to the deep.

The White Cliffs of Dover on the coast of England pictured in the image on the correct are a famous example of limestone calcium carbonate sediments that were deep under the ocean millions of years ago. Over very long time scales, tectonic forces have pushed these sediments higher up water. If you examined a sample of sediments from these cliffs, you would find shells of microscopic coccolithophores and foraminifera that lived, died then sank to the bounding main floor millions of years ago. Over time, these sediment layers such as the White Cliffs of Dover eventually return carbon to the oceans by weathering and erosion.

Checking In

Cease and Think

2. Underline or circle the right answer in the dichotomous choices in boldtype

If phytoplankton populations decrease, you might expect:

The amount of CO2 in the temper would increase/decrease.
The amount of carbon moving down to exist stored in deep ocean sediments would increment/decrease.

Explain why you chose your answers.

3. Cull two of the following and describe their office in the ocean's biological pump.

· phytoplankton

· nutrient webs

· microbes

· zooplankton

· shells

4. How are marine phytoplankton and forests similar in their part in the carbon cycle?

Optional extensions

Want to learn more virtually the oceanic carbon cycle? Check out these resource.

Learn more about the microbial loop at this link http://coolclassroom.org/micro_test/web_lessons/ML/ml.html
Whale poop pumps up ocean health (ScienceDaily) or the original inquiry at PLOS Ane: The Whale Pump: Marine Mammals Enhance Primary ...
Ocean Bacteria go pumped up! Team discovers new factors impacting fate of sinking carbon
Uncovering the Oceans Biological Pump: Scientists reveal the subconscious movement of chemicals and particles in the bounding main
What is a Coccolithophore? Fact Sheet : Feature Articles
Watch this TED talk video: Why You lot Should Care about whale poo!
Spotter The Plankton Chronicles
Watch From Mud to Molecules - What Deep Ocean Sediments Can Tell Us Near By Climates