Nutrient on EARTH Magazine

Grounding Asian jumping worms

Wed, 13 Feb 2019 16:31:47 -0500

Asian jumping worms, which can decrease the availability of nutrients in soils for microbes, plants and fungi, have been on the rise in Wisconsin and other states. Credit: Geological Society of America.

To tell the difference between a regular earthworm and an Asian jumping worm, pick it up. An earthworm will likely just lay there, perhaps curling gently around a finger, but a jumping worm will thrash around violently until it jumps out of your grasp. Researchers are looking at how this invasive species is altering soil in Wisconsin, where the worms have been found in growing numbers since 2013.

Coral Reef Roundup: December 2016

Tue, 15 Nov 2016 18:20:04 -0500

Reefs that lack large predatory fish have 50 percent fewer nutrients. Credit: Nicodemo Lentile.

With multiple threats facing our coral reefs — from climate change to overfishing — and scientists continually studying the coral reefs beneath the waves, new findings are announced often. Here are a few of the latest updates.

Nutrient deficiency delayed life after mass extinction

Tue, 15 Nov 2016 18:16:07 -0500

Stephen Grasby collects samples from an outcrop on northern Ellesmere Island in the Canadian High Arctic. Credit: John Spear, Colorado School of Mines.

After Earth’s most severe mass extinction, life took up to 9 million years to recover — millions of years longer than after other extinction events. New research published in Geology suggests that a collapse in the ocean’s productivity might have been the cause.

Nutrient runoff feeding Baltic Sea dead zone

Tue, 19 Aug 2014 11:04:52 -0400

Hypoxic (red) and anoxic (black) deep waters in the Baltic Sea extend over a far larger area today than they have historically. Credit: J. Carstensen et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2014.

Low-oxygen, or hypoxic, deep waters now extend over an area of about 60,000 square kilometers in the Baltic Sea, a tenfold increase compared to 115 years ago, according to a recent study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The hypoxic zone has fluctuated substantially in that period, but much of the expansion has occurred in recent decades as a result of large inputs of nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus from human activities such as agriculture, reported Jacob Carstensen of Aarhus University in Denmark and colleagues.

Tracking trace elements and isotopes in the oceans

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 06:41:58 -0500

A report from the GEOTRACES cruise across the Atlantic

For decades, scientists have been trying to piece together the enormously complicated puzzle that is the ocean. They have collected many different kinds of information, from trace elements like iron to tritium isotopes, from many different parts of the ocean. Bringing together these disparate pieces to form a more complete picture is crucial to understanding how human activities, the marine food web, the global carbon cycle and the circulation of seawater are all interconnected.