Search results for " Water"
showing 10 items of 3407 documents
Geological Setting and Paleoecology of the Upper Cretaceous Bench 19 Marine Vertebrate Bonebed at Bentiaba, Angola
2014
AbstractThe Bench 19 Bonebed at Bentiaba, Angola, is a unique concentration of marine vertebrates preserving six species of mosasaurs in sediments best correlated by magnetostratigraphy to chron C32n.1n between 71.4 and 71.64 Ma. The bonebed formed at a paleolatitude near 24°S, with an Atlantic width at that latitude approximating 2700 km, roughly half that of the current width. The locality lies on an uncharacteristically narrow continental shelf near transform faults that controlled the coastal outline of Africa in the formation of the South Atlantic Ocean. Biostratigraphic change through the Bentiaba section indicates that the accumulation occurred in an ecological time dimension within …
Carbon-isotope records of the Early Jurassic (Toarcian) Oceanix Anixic Event from the Valdorbia (Umbria-Marche Apennines) and Monte Mangart (Julian A…
2009
The Toarcian oceanic anoxic event (ca 183 Ma) coincides with a global perturbation marked by enhanced organic carbon burial and a general decrease in calcium carbonate production, probably triggered by changes in the composition of marine plankton and elevated carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. This study is based on high-resolution sampling of two stratigraphic successions, located in Valdorbia (Umbria-Marche Apennines) and Monte Mangart (Julian Alps), Italy, which represent expressions of the Toarcian oceanic anoxic event in deep-water pelagic sediments. These successions are characterized by the occurrence of black shales showing relatively low total organic carbon concentrations (…
Soil physicochemical and microbial drivers of temperature sensitivity of soil organic matter decomposition under boreal forests
2020
Abstract Soil organic matter (SOM) in boreal forests is an important carbon sink. The aim of this study was to assess and to detect factors controlling the temperature sensitivity of SOM decomposition. Soils were collected from Scots pine, Norway spruce, silver birch, and mixed forests (O horizon) in northern Finland, and their basal respiration rates at five different temperatures (from 4 to 28 °C) were measured. The Q10 values, showing the respiration rate changes with a 10 °C increase, were calculated using a Gaussian function and were based on temperature-dependent changes. Several soil physicochemical parameters were measured, and the functional diversity of the soil microbial communit…
Economic modelling as a tool to support macroalgal bloom management: a case study (Sacca di Goro, Po river delta)
2003
During the last 20, years, intensive mollusk farming has been developed in coastal waters, mostly in sheltered bays and lagoons. Often, mollusk stocks are threatened by frequent anoxic events from macroalgal blooms. Here, a decision support tool is described to select the optimal short-term strategy to control algal biomasses. Even though long-term and detailed studies of the lagoon systems are required to provide reliable, biologically based policies, we have here developed a simplified analysis that overlooks most of the ecological complexity, but explicitly includes environmental variability and uncertainty in parameter estimation in the economic assessment of the performances of differe…
Applicability and consequences of the integration of alternative models for CO<sub>2</sub> transfer velocity into a process-based lake mo…
2019
Abstract. Freshwater lakes are important in carbon cycling, especially in the boreal zone where many lakes are supersaturated with the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) and emit it to the atmosphere, thus ventilating carbon originally fixed by the terrestrial system. The exchange of CO2 between water and the atmosphere is commonly estimated using simple wind-based parameterizations or models of gas transfer velocity (k). More complex surface renewal models, however, have been shown to yield more correct estimates of k in comparison with direct CO2 flux measurements. We incorporated four gas exchange models with different complexity into a vertical process-based physico-biochemical lake mo…
Modelling forest decline using SMOS soil moisture and vegetation optical depth
2018
Global change is increasing the risk of forest decline worldwide, impacting carbon and water cycles. Hence, there is an urgent need for predicting forest decline occurrence. To that purpose, this study links forest decline events in Catalonia, detected by the DEBOSCAT forest monitoring program, with information from the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite. Firstly, this study reviews the role of the SMOS soil moisture in a previous forest decline episode occurred in 2012, where the authors concluded that dry soils increased the probability of observing decline in broadleaved forests. Secondly, the present study detects that forest decline in 2012 and 2016 was linked to very dr…
Changes of energy fluxes in marine animal forests of the anthropocene: Factors shaping the future seascape
2019
12 pages, 3 figures
Change in dominance determines herbivore effects on plant biodiversity
2018
Herbivores alter plant biodiversity (species richness) in many of the world’s ecosystems, but the magnitude and the direction of herbivore effects on biodiversity vary widely within and among ecosystems. One current theory predicts that herbivores enhance plant biodiversity at high productivity but have the opposite effect at low productivity. Yet, empirical support for the importance of site productivity as a mediator of these herbivore impacts is equivocal. Here, we synthesize data from 252 large-herbivore exclusion studies, spanning a 20-fold range in site productivity, to test an alternative hypothesis—that herbivore-induced changes in the competitive environment determine the response …
Mn/Ca in shells of Arctica islandica (Baltic Sea) – A potential proxy for ocean hypoxia?
2021
Oxygen depletion threatens an increasing number of shallow water environments, specifically habitats below the seasonal halocline in coastal settings of the Baltic Sea. To understand the natural variations of dissolved oxygen levels on seasonal and inter-annual time-scales prior to the instrumental era, high-resolution archives are urgently required. The present study evaluates the potential use of Mn/Ca values in shells of the bivalve, Arctica islandica to infer concentrations of past dissolved oxygen concentrations. This study is based on laser ablation – inductively coupled plasma – mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) data of six contemporaneous specimens and demonstrates that background varia…
The stoichiometry of particulate nutrients in Lake Tanganyika — implications for nutrient limitation of phytoplankton
1999
We studied the potential nutrient limitation of phytoplankton by means of seston nutrient stoichiometry and nutrient enrichment bioassays in the epilimnion of Lake Tanganyika. In most cases, the particulate carbon to phosphorus (C:P) ratio was high and indicated moderate P deficiency, while the respective C:N ratio mainly suggested moderate N deficiency. The N:P ratios of seston indicated rather balanced N and P supply. In three two-day enrichment bioassays in April—May 1995, a combined addition of P, N and organic carbon (glucose) always increased primary production in comparison to untreated controls. Primary production also slightly increased after the addition of phosphate-P, while the …