{"id":59628,"date":"2014-12-15T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-12-15T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/media-tip-sheet-uri-research-to-be-presented-at-international-earth-science-meeting-dec-15-19\/"},"modified":"2014-12-15T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-12-15T00:00:00","slug":"media-tip-sheet-uri-research-to-be-presented-at-international-earth-science-meeting-dec-15-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2014\/12\/media-tip-sheet-uri-research-to-be-presented-at-international-earth-science-meeting-dec-15-19\/","title":{"rendered":"Media Tip Sheet: 溏心vlog免费B站 research to be presented at international earth science meeting, Dec. 15-19"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tFrank Baker (@ AGU meeting in San Francisco) 401-218-2309<\/p>\n

Underwater volcanoes, Great Lakes pollution, subseafloor life, more<\/b><\/p>\n


\n\tNARRAGANSETT, R.I. \u2013 December 15, 2014 — The following research is among more than 40 projects that will be presented by scientists from the 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Graduate School of Oceanography at the American Geophysical Union\u2019s fall meeting in San Francisco from Dec. 15 to 19:<\/p>\n

Hydrothermal Venting at Kick\u2019Em Jenny Submarine Volcano<\/b><\/p>\n


\n\tThe Kick\u2019Em Jenny underwater volcano is the most active submarine volcano in the Caribbean. It erupts about every 10 years, but it has not done so since 2001, so scientists believe it is overdue. To determine its present state, 溏心vlog免费B站 Oceanography Professor Steven Carey led two investigations to the crater to collect water samples and take measurements of temperatures and gases from its hydrothermal vent system.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cIt turns out that the gases bubbling out of the crater are almost pure carbon dioxide, which looks like it is contributing to acidification of the crater water,\u201d Carey said. \u201cIt creates extremes of acidification that haven\u2019t been observed at other hydrothermal sites. We wonder what kind of an effect it will have on the marine biological community.\u201d Few large organisms were observed around the vents at Kick\u2019Em Jenny, unlike at most other vent systems.<\/p>\n


\n\tThe researchers also found that the hydrothermal vent lacked the abundance of precious metals found at hydrothermal vents at mid-ocean ridges. Carey believes that because it is a lower temperature hydrothermal system, the minerals are being deposited subsurface rather than on the seafloor.<\/p>\n

Radon and radium in the ice-covered Arctic Ocean, and what they reveal about gas exchange in the sea ice zone<\/b><\/p>\n


\nCarbon dioxide and other gases are continually moving from the atmosphere to the sea and back again. Since the Industrial Revolution, the ocean has absorbed more carbon dioxide than it gives off; in total, about 35 percent of human-emitted carbon dioxide has been absorbed by the ocean. It is well understood that this gas exchange is driven by turbulence at the ocean surface. In the open ocean, this turbulence comes primarily from wind, but it is more complicated in polar regions where sea ice covers the ocean for much of the year. So 溏心vlog免费B站 Assistant Professor Brice Loose collected data on a Canadian icebreaker to determine the gas exchange rate in the sea ice zone.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cSea ice blocks direct air-sea gas exchange, but it is also a source of turbulence. Imagine a flotilla of barges being dragged around by the wind and the water. This produces a lot of turbulence,\u201d he said. \u201cA multitude of other processes, such as water freezing and melting, also affect gas exchange. It\u2019s not as simple as in the open ocean.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nLoose and colleagues estimated the gas exchange rate using the natural production of radon in the ocean. Radon is produced by the radioactive decay of radium, and scientists can compare the abundance of radon to radium \u2013 any difference in abundance is due to gas exchange. \u201cWe\u2019re developing models of all of the processes that produce turbulence and influence the gas exchange rate,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you don\u2019t account for these other factors, it is possible to underestimate gas by almost half in some conditions and overestimate it by a lot in other conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Energetic Constraints of Subseafloor Life<\/b><\/p>\n


\n\tFood is extremely scarce in subseafloor sediments, so microbial respiration rates are orders of magnitude slower there than in the surface world. And yet microorganisms have co-existed for millions of years in sediments hundreds of meters deep. According to Steven D\u2019Hondt, 溏心vlog免费B站 professor of oceanography, the simplest explanation for their co-existence is that the various microbes are not competing with each other.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cWe hypothesize that these organisms are actually cooperating with each other. They use different oxidation pathways that remove each others\u2019 reaction products,\u201d he said. \u201cThis allows them to live at an energetic minimum wage for millions of years.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tBased on measurements of pore water chemistry from several sediment coring expeditions, D\u2019Hondt concludes that the microbes use so little energy that there is likely very little reproduction taking place. Instead, the microbes use all of the available energy for repairing and maintaining their cells. \u201cThis opens the possibility that the organisms may live for millions of years,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Air-Water Exchange of Legacy and Emerging Organic Pollutants across the Great Lakes<\/b><\/p>\n


\nMeasurements of organic pollutants in the air and water around Lake Erie and Lake Ontario have revealed that airborne emissions are no longer the primary cause of the lakes\u2019 contamination. Instead, most of the lakes\u2019 chemical pollutants come from sources on land or in rivers.<\/p>\n


\n\tAccording to Rainer Lohmann, 溏心vlog免费B站 professor of chemical oceanography, water quality in the Great Lakes has been slowly improving for many years. Historic studies of the lakes have usually pointed to atmospheric deposition as the primary cause of pollution in the lakes \u2013 from industrial emissions, motor vehicle exhausts and related sources. But as air pollution has decreased, Lohmann has found a shift in the source of Great Lakes chemical pollutants.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cSome contaminants still come from the atmosphere, but it is now mostly from wastewater plants, contaminated industrial sites and inputs from major rivers,\u201d Lohmann said. \u201cIt\u2019s quite a bad mix, but it\u2019s getting better.\u201d<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Frank Baker (@ AGU meeting in San Francisco) 401-218-2309 Underwater volcanoes, Great Lakes pollution, subseafloor life, more NARRAGANSETT, R.I. \u2013 December 15, 2014 — The following research is among more than 40 projects that will be presented by scientists from the 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Graduate School of Oceanography at the American Geophysical Union\u2019s […]<\/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-59628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59628","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=59628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59628\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}