Pressure from the deep sea
Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI)
Published: 5 June 2019
At a global workshop on deep-sea taxonomy, scientists emphasized the urgent need for better funding, digitization, and jobs to explore and document the vast, mostly unknown biodiversity of Earth’s largest habitat.
Keywords: AWI, Datz Foundation, conservation, digitization, taxonomy funding, Senckenberg Research Institute, species extinction.
All-in-one: New microbe degrades oil to gas
Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI)
Published: 20 August 2019
Researchers discovered a single archaeon, Methanoliparia, that can convert oil into methane and carbon dioxide through alkane disproportionation—previously thought to require a symbiosis between archaea and bacteria.
Keywords: MPI, hydrocarbon seeps, crude oil, mBio, Gulf of Mexico, MARUM-QUEST, microbial ecology.
Tiny fossils reveal 25,000 years of carbon history in the Southern Ocean
Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI)
Published: 21 October 2019
A 25,000-year study shows the Southern Ocean's CO₂ exchange varied by region—some areas absorbed CO₂, others released it—revealing its complex, vital role in past climate regulation during glacial-interglacial cycles.
Keywords: palaeoclimate, ocean-atmosphere exchange, sub-Antarctic, Indo-Pacific sector, Atlantic sector, Nature Geoscience.
