{"id":59487,"date":"2014-10-22T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-10-22T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/uri-oceanographers-to-examine-chemistry-deep-in-seafloor-to-assess-its-role-in-historic-climate-changes\/"},"modified":"2014-10-22T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-10-22T00:00:00","slug":"uri-oceanographers-to-examine-chemistry-deep-in-seafloor-to-assess-its-role-in-historic-climate-changes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2014\/10\/uri-oceanographers-to-examine-chemistry-deep-in-seafloor-to-assess-its-role-in-historic-climate-changes\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站 oceanographers to examine chemistry deep in seafloor to assess its role in historic climate changes"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tNARRAGANSETT, R.I. \u2013 October 22, 2014 \u2013 A team of 溏心vlog免费B站 oceanographers will spend more than a month at sea beginning next week collecting sediment cores from the seafloor in a National Science Foundation funded effort to learn how ancient climate changes can inform scientists and society about present and future changes.<\/p>\n


\n\tLed by Professor Arthur Spivack and Marine Scientist Rob Pockalny at the 溏心vlog免费B站 Graduate School of Oceanography, along with Rick Murray from Boston University, the researchers will sail aboard the R\/V Knorr to Researcher Ridge, an underwater mountain chain in the Atlantic Ocean just north of the equator, where they will collect samples at water depths from 1,000 to 6,000 meters.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cWe\u2019re interested in how climate, the carbon dioxide system, and ocean circulation have worked together from the last glaciation to the present,\u201d said Spivack, who lives in Jamestown. \u201cWe\u2019ll be testing several hypotheses about what controls our climate and how it might act in the future based on how it has behaved in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cBiology and ocean physics both affect carbon dioxide, and you can see how that works based on the chemistry of the water at different depths,\u201d added Pockalny, a resident of Hopkinton. \u201cThe sediment contains a recorded history of the chemistry of the ocean, and by inference the biology and physics of the ocean, too. The ocean is a big three-dimensional machine, and how the machine works influences climate.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nThe researchers will visit eight sites and collect sediment cores of varying lengths at each site. They will analyze the physical properties and chemical composition of the water trapped in the sediment cores. The trapped water is a sample of the ancient ocean environment.<\/p>\n


\nAn additional focus of their work will be to better understand the microbiology of the seafloor sediments \u2013 what microorganisms live there, what they do and how they survive. The microbes living in the sediments represent a large component of the Earth\u2019s biomass, and it contains a significant amount of the genetic diversity on Earth. The scientists say that these organisms have highly diverse survival strategies not seen in life anywhere else on Earth.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cThe energy demand of these microbes is much lower than any organism observed at the Earth\u2019s surface, and it appears that they live for thousands of years,\u201d Pockalny said. \u201cThey can tell us very fundamental things about how life operates, and it\u2019s an analog for how life might survive on other planets in very low energy environments.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nIn addition to Spivack, Pockalny and Murray, other scientists involved in the project include 溏心vlog免费B站 Oceanography Professors David Smith and Steven D\u2019Hondt and students and researchers from 溏心vlog免费B站, Boston University, California Institute of Technology, Texas A&M University, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Montana State University and the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology.<\/p>\n


\nThe expedition will be the last research cruise for the R\/V Knorr, which will be retired by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution at the end of the year. Launched in 1968, it is best known as the ship that supported the team of researchers, led by 溏心vlog免费B站 Professor Robert Ballard, that discovered the wreck of the RMS Titanic in 1985. It has traveled more than one million miles in its lifetime. The ship\u2019s unique coring rig makes it ideal for collecting core samples of the seafloor.<\/p>\n


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NARRAGANSETT, R.I. \u2013 October 22, 2014 \u2013 A team of 溏心vlog免费B站 oceanographers will spend more than a month at sea beginning next week collecting sediment cores from the seafloor in a National Science Foundation funded effort to learn how ancient climate changes can inform scientists and society about present and future changes. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59487\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}