Ocean acidification represents a threat to marine species worldwide, and forecasting the ecological impacts of acidification is a high priority for science, management, and policy. As research on the topic expands at an exponential rate, a comprehensive understanding of the variability in organisms' responses and corresponding levels of certainty is ...
Although seagrasses and marine macroalgae (macro-autotrophs) play critical ecological roles in reef, lagoon, coastal and open-water ecosystems, their response to ocean acidification (OA) and climate change is not well understood. In this review, we examine marine macro-autotroph biochemistry and physiology relevant to their response to elevated dissolved inorganic carbon [DIC], ...
Ocean acidification resulting from the global increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration is emerging as a threat to marine species, including crustaceans. Fisheries involving the American lobster (Homarus americanus) are economically important in eastern Canada and United States. Based on ocean pH levels predicted for 2100, this study examined the effects ...
Anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) is being absorbed into the ocean, altering seawater chemistry, with potentially negative impacts on a wide range of marine organisms. The early life stages of invertebrates with internal and external aragonite structures may be particularly vulnerable to this ocean acidification. Impacts to cephalopods, which form aragonite ...
Ocean acidification (OA) has important implications for the persistence of coral reef ecosystems, due to potentially negative effects on biomineralization. Many coral reefs are dynamic with respect to carbonate chemistry, and experience fluctuations in pCO2 that exceed OA projections for the near future. To understand the influence of dynamic pCO2 on an ...
The ocean carbon cycle is tightly linked with the cycles of the major nutrient elements nitrogen, phosphorus, and silicon. It is therefore likely that enrichment of the ocean with anthropogenic CO2 and attendant acidification will have large consequences for marine nutrient biogeochemistry, and for the microbes that mediate many key nutrient ...
Humans have dramatically altered nutrient cycles at local to global scales. We examined changes in anthropogenic nutrient inputs to the northeastern United States (NE) from 1930 to 2000. We created a comprehensive time series of anthropogenic N and P inputs to 437 counties in the NE at 5 year intervals. ...
We show that death by dissolution is an important size-dependent mortality factor for juvenile bivalves. Utilizing a new experimental design, we were able to replicate saturation states in sediments after values frequently encountered by Mercenaria mercenaria in coastal deposits (Ωaragonite = 0.4 and 0.6). When 0.2-mm M. mercenariawere reared in sediments at Ωaragonite = 0.4 ...
The Eastern oyster, Crassostrea virginica (Gmelin, 1791), is the second most valuable bivalve fishery in the USA and is sensitive to high levels of partial pressure of CO2 (pCO2). Here we present experiments that comprehensively examined how the ocean's past, present and projected (21st and 22nd centuries) CO2 concentrations impact the growth and physiology ...
