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Melting glacial ice harms food chain
(UPI) Junau, Alaska (UPI) Dec 28, 2009 Melting glacial ice in the Gulf of Alaska affects the marine food chain from microbes to the fish that feed on them, scientists said. The organic matter of the gulf's watersheds is "remarkably" biologically active and is likely to decrease as glacial ice melts and the biomass is not replenished, said Rick Edwards, an aquatic ecologist with the Pacific Northwest Station in Juneau, Alaska. The organic matter supports life to the highest level of the marine food chain, Edwards and his team wrote in a recent issue of the journal Nature. Some of the organic matter discharged from the watersheds is almost 4,000 years old, yet more than 66 percent of it is rapidly metabolized by marine microbes into living biomass to support the food chain, said Eran Hood, a researcher from the University of Alaska Southeast. "We don't currently have much information about how runoff from glaciers may be contributing to productivity in downstream marine ecosystems," Hood said. "This is a particularly critical question given the rate at which glaciers along the Gulf of Alaska are thinning and receding."
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Tibet's glaciers in danger of disappearingBeijing (UPI) Dec 15, 2009 Tibet's glaciers are melting at an alarming rate, scientists say. Black soot is probably responsible for as much as half of the glacial melt and greenhouse gases responsible for the rest, according to research announced Tuesday by NASA and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. "During the last 20 years, the black soot concentration has increased two- to three-fold relative to its ... read more |
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