The Effects of Natural Iron Fertilisation on Deep-Sea Ecology: The Crozet Plateau, Southern Indian Ocean
The addition of iron to high-nutrient low-chlorophyll (HNLC) oceanic waters stimulates phytoplankton, leading to greater primary production. Large-scale artificial ocean iron fertilization (OIF) has been proposed as a means of mitigating anthropogenic atmospheric CO2, but its impacts on ocean ecosys...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:3114783 2023-05-15T15:59:33+02:00 The Effects of Natural Iron Fertilisation on Deep-Sea Ecology: The Crozet Plateau, Southern Indian Ocean Wolff, George A. Billett, David S. M. Bett, Brian J. Holtvoeth, Jens FitzGeorge-Balfour, Tania Fisher, Elizabeth H. Cross, Ian Shannon, Roger Salter, Ian Boorman, Ben King, Nicola J. Jamieson, Alan Chaillan, Frédéric 2011-06-14 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3114783 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21695118 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0020697 en eng Public Library of Science http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3114783 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21695118 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0020697 Wolff et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. CC-BY Research Article Text 2011 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0020697 2013-09-03T15:57:26Z The addition of iron to high-nutrient low-chlorophyll (HNLC) oceanic waters stimulates phytoplankton, leading to greater primary production. Large-scale artificial ocean iron fertilization (OIF) has been proposed as a means of mitigating anthropogenic atmospheric CO2, but its impacts on ocean ecosystems below the photic zone are unknown. Natural OIF, through the addition of iron leached from volcanic islands, has been shown to enhance primary productivity and carbon export and so can be used to study the effects of OIF on life in the ocean. We compared two closely-located deep-sea sites (∼400 km apart and both at ∼4200 m water depth) to the East (naturally iron fertilized; +Fe) and South (HNLC) of the Crozet Islands in the southern Indian Ocean. Our results suggest that long-term geo-engineering of surface oceanic waters via artificial OIF would lead to significant changes in deep-sea ecosystems. We found that the +Fe area had greater supplies of organic matter inputs to the seafloor, including polyunsaturated fatty acid and carotenoid nutrients. The +Fe site also had greater densities and biomasses of large deep-sea animals with lower levels of evenness in community structuring. The species composition was also very different, with the +Fe site showing similarities to eutrophic sites in other ocean basins. Moreover, major differences occurred in the taxa at the +Fe and HNLC sites revealing the crucial role that surface oceanic conditions play in changing and structuring deep-sea benthic communities. Text Crozet Islands PubMed Central (PMC) Indian PLoS ONE 6 6 e20697 |
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Research Article Wolff, George A. Billett, David S. M. Bett, Brian J. Holtvoeth, Jens FitzGeorge-Balfour, Tania Fisher, Elizabeth H. Cross, Ian Shannon, Roger Salter, Ian Boorman, Ben King, Nicola J. Jamieson, Alan Chaillan, Frédéric The Effects of Natural Iron Fertilisation on Deep-Sea Ecology: The Crozet Plateau, Southern Indian Ocean |
topic_facet |
Research Article |
description |
The addition of iron to high-nutrient low-chlorophyll (HNLC) oceanic waters stimulates phytoplankton, leading to greater primary production. Large-scale artificial ocean iron fertilization (OIF) has been proposed as a means of mitigating anthropogenic atmospheric CO2, but its impacts on ocean ecosystems below the photic zone are unknown. Natural OIF, through the addition of iron leached from volcanic islands, has been shown to enhance primary productivity and carbon export and so can be used to study the effects of OIF on life in the ocean. We compared two closely-located deep-sea sites (∼400 km apart and both at ∼4200 m water depth) to the East (naturally iron fertilized; +Fe) and South (HNLC) of the Crozet Islands in the southern Indian Ocean. Our results suggest that long-term geo-engineering of surface oceanic waters via artificial OIF would lead to significant changes in deep-sea ecosystems. We found that the +Fe area had greater supplies of organic matter inputs to the seafloor, including polyunsaturated fatty acid and carotenoid nutrients. The +Fe site also had greater densities and biomasses of large deep-sea animals with lower levels of evenness in community structuring. The species composition was also very different, with the +Fe site showing similarities to eutrophic sites in other ocean basins. Moreover, major differences occurred in the taxa at the +Fe and HNLC sites revealing the crucial role that surface oceanic conditions play in changing and structuring deep-sea benthic communities. |
format |
Text |
author |
Wolff, George A. Billett, David S. M. Bett, Brian J. Holtvoeth, Jens FitzGeorge-Balfour, Tania Fisher, Elizabeth H. Cross, Ian Shannon, Roger Salter, Ian Boorman, Ben King, Nicola J. Jamieson, Alan Chaillan, Frédéric |
author_facet |
Wolff, George A. Billett, David S. M. Bett, Brian J. Holtvoeth, Jens FitzGeorge-Balfour, Tania Fisher, Elizabeth H. Cross, Ian Shannon, Roger Salter, Ian Boorman, Ben King, Nicola J. Jamieson, Alan Chaillan, Frédéric |
author_sort |
Wolff, George A. |
title |
The Effects of Natural Iron Fertilisation on Deep-Sea Ecology: The Crozet Plateau, Southern Indian Ocean |
title_short |
The Effects of Natural Iron Fertilisation on Deep-Sea Ecology: The Crozet Plateau, Southern Indian Ocean |
title_full |
The Effects of Natural Iron Fertilisation on Deep-Sea Ecology: The Crozet Plateau, Southern Indian Ocean |
title_fullStr |
The Effects of Natural Iron Fertilisation on Deep-Sea Ecology: The Crozet Plateau, Southern Indian Ocean |
title_full_unstemmed |
The Effects of Natural Iron Fertilisation on Deep-Sea Ecology: The Crozet Plateau, Southern Indian Ocean |
title_sort |
effects of natural iron fertilisation on deep-sea ecology: the crozet plateau, southern indian ocean |
publisher |
Public Library of Science |
publishDate |
2011 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3114783 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21695118 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0020697 |
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Indian |
geographic_facet |
Indian |
genre |
Crozet Islands |
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Crozet Islands |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3114783 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21695118 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0020697 |
op_rights |
Wolff et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0020697 |
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PLoS ONE |
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6 |
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6 |
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e20697 |
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