Plankton thrives on volcanoes

Plankton are the foundation of the marine food chain, they need sunlight to carry out photosynthesis as well as other nutrients like nitrate, phosphate and iron to feed themselves . Therefore, in areas of the ocean, where the sea in that place has little iron, plankton appear sparse.

If you want to increase the number of plankton in the oceans, create a volcano.

On a beautiful day in August 2008, scientists suddenly discovered the dense distribution of plankton (nearly 2 million km ² ) concentrated in the Northeast Pacific region. Canada and the Aleutian Islands. It all originated from scientists' investigation of a ash cloud arising from a volcano in the Aleutian Islands a few days earlier. The ash (containing thousands of tons of iron) falling into the Pacific northeast turned out to be a lucrative food source (with 10 times the amount of iron in the sea) for plankton and just in Within a few days the concentration of domestic chlorophyll has increased by 150%.

According to a new study of this phenomenon published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, for the first time outside scientists, scientists can witness plankton blooming at a rapid rate in Aqueous solution of seawater and volcanic dust . This further prompted scientists to come up with the idea of ​​extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by deliberately sowing the ocean in a way that calculated an appropriate amount of iron.

However, according to Roberta Hamme, working at Victoria University in Canada, the team's preliminary analysis shows that trying to stimulate plankton growth by adding iron to water will have an impact. Very small because the absorption of CO ₂ of seawater is limited.

Paul Harrison, an ocean scientist at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, who is not involved in the study, said: " Intentionally adding large-scale iron to create algae to reduce the increase. of CO ₂ in the atmosphere can be an inefficient job . "

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Ho Duy Binh
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