Phytoplankton are tiny floating plants (algae) living in oceans. In the process of photosynthesis, phytoplankton produces half of the world's oxygen. Moreover, by primary production, death and sinking, they transport carbon from the ocean's surface layer to marine sediments. There are many species of phytoplankton that can be distinguished according to morphology. In this paper, we investigate ...

Impact of the regional climate and substance properties on the fate and atmospheric long-range transport of persistent organic pollutants – examples of DDT and γ-HCH V. S. Semeena, J. Feichter, and G. Lammel Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Centre for Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (ZMAW), Hamburg, Germany Meteorological Institute, University of Hamburg, Centre for Marine and Atmospheric ...

Iron is essential for aerobic organisms. Additionally, photosynthetic organisms must maintain the iron-rich photosynthetic electron transport chain, which likely evolved in the iron-replete Proterozoic ocean. The subsequent rise in oxygen since those times has drastically decreased the levels of bioavailable iron, indicating that adaptations have been made to maintain sufficient cellular iron l...

Specific objectives of our research are: (1) elucidate the links between dust particles morphology (shape and size), composition, optical properties and related radiative effects; (2) relate the properties of dust to its source and investigate the evolution of dust properties during transport in the marine boundary layer, focusing on the comparative analysis of the Asian, African, Southwestern ...

An understanding of the carbon cycle within arctic sediments requires discrimination between the terrigenous and marine components of organic carbon, insight into the removal mechanisms for labile carbon during burial and appreciation of shelf-to-basin processes. Using a large data set of multiple molecular organic markers (alkanes, alkanols, sterols, saturated and unsaturated fatty acids, dica...

We have applied a recently introduced proxy, the BIT (branched and isoprenoid tetraether) index, to determine terrestrial organic matter (TOM) transport from the rivers Rhine and Meuse and their tributaries to the southern North Sea. This index is based on crenarchaeol, an isoprenoidal glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraether (GDGT) predominantly derived from aquatic Crenarchaeota and branched GDGT...

About half the carbon fixed by phytoplankton in the ocean is taken up and metabolized by marine bacteria, a transfer that is mediated through the seawater dissolved organic carbon (DOC) pool. The chemical complexity of marine DOC, along with a poor understanding of which compounds form the basis of trophic interactions between bacteria and phytoplankton, have impeded efforts to identify key cur...

The occurrence of active water transport (net transport against a free energy gradient) in photosynthetic organisms has been debated for several decades. Here, active water transport is considered in terms of its roles, where it is found, and the mechanisms by which it could occur. First there is a brief consideration of the possibility of active water transport into plant xylem in the generati...