Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Nutrient Cycles And Marine Microbes In A Co2-Enriched Ocean, David A. Hutchins, Margaret R. Mulholland, Feixue Fu

OES Faculty Publications

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 transformations. The best available evidence suggests that the nitrogen cycle may respond strongly to higher CO2 through increases in global N2 fixation and possibly denitrification, as well as potential decreases in nitrification. These trends could cause nitrification to become a nitrogen cycle "bottleneck," by increasing the flux of N2 …