Award: OCE-0961414

Award Title: Collaborative Research: The Great Southern Coccolithophore Belt
Funding Source: NSF Division of Ocean Sciences (NSF OCE)
Program Manager: David L. Garrison

Outcomes Report

The Great Belt project was focused on improving the scientific understanding of the Southern Ocean. We identified a biological feature that occurs each asutral spring in the Southern Ocean that forms what we call the Great Calcite Belt. It is the largest biological feature visible from space, and is formed from the growth of calcifying phytoplankton, coccolithophores, in the surface ocean. It's presence in the Southern Ocean alters our understanding of the ocean carbon and nutrient cycles, as well as what trace elements such as Iron and Cobalt, that support this feature. For our component of the project, we conducted two cruises in the Southern Ocean (in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean sectors of the Soutehrn Ocean) and specifically studied the impact of the Great Belt upon the ocean carbon cycle, and air-sea transfer of carbon dioxide (CO2). We successfully sampled the Great Belt to examoine the time and space variability of ocean carbon. We found that coccolithophores in the Great Belt produced CO2 during their growth phase, wit the net effect of cuasing this part of the Southern Ocean to release CO2 back to the atmosphere. This finding is unique in the Southern Ocean as typical phytoplankton growth by other taxa such as diatoms enhances the Southern Ocean as a sink for atmospheric CO2. Thus the Great Belt is a globally significant feature that reverse the typical direction of air-sea CO2 fluxes in the Soutehrn Ocean. This fiding has substantial implications for our understanding of the global carbon cycle, and the future impact of ocean acidification and climate change in the highly sensitive region of the worlds ocean. Last Modified: 08/31/2015 Submitted by: Nicholas R Bates The data generated from the project have been submitted to the BCO-DMO data repository. The links for the data project site and data are as follows: Project Link: http://www.bco-dmo.org/project/473206 Dataset Link: http://www.bco-dmo.org/dataset/565405 Last Modified: 11/12/2015 Submitted by: Nicholas R Bates

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NSF Research Results Report


People

Principal Investigator: Nicholas R. Bates (Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS), Inc.)