Count down the days until 2015 together with the OA-ICC! Each day of December you will find a short story on the OA-ICC news stream highlighting an ocean acidification project, effort, or resource.
Discover today’s story below: “It’s not clear unless it’s Nuclear!”.
Scientists at the International Atomic Energy Agency Environment Laboratories (IAEA-EL) in Monaco have used nuclear techniques to examine the responses of marine organisms to changes in seawater chemistry. Isotopic and nuclear techniques have been used to investigate important biological processes affected by ocean acidification such as calcification or biomineralisation, metabolism, primary production, nitrogen fixation and bioaccumulation of trace elements and radionuclides. ‘Environmental archives’ such as fossilized marine organisms or the skeletons of long living corals have also been examined to determine their isotope ratios which can consequently provide an indication of the pH levels in past oceans. This information is then used for uncovering past acidification events and is essential for future projections and acidification scenarios.
Find out more about nuclear applications for research on ocean acidification by visiting: http://www.iaea.org/monaco/page.php?page=2256
