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Widespread Ancient Ocean “Dead Zones” Challenged Early Life

*Persistent lack of oxygen in Earth’s oceans affected animal evolution*

The oceans became oxygen-rich as they are today about 600 million years ago, during Earth’s Late Ediacaran Period. Before that, most scientists believed until recently, the ancient oceans were relatively oxygen-poor for the preceding four billion years.

Now biogeochemists at the University of California-Riverside (UCR) have found evidence that the oceans went back to being “anoxic,” or oxygen-poor, around 499 million years ago, soon after the first appearance of animals on the planet. (more…)

Cloud-Based Computing System Helps Scientists Study the Breathing of the Biosphere

By Guest PostOctober 13, 2010Environment, Technologybiometeorology, biosphere breathing, california, carbon dioxide, carbon-climate science, chloroplast, climate change, climate science, cloud-based dataset, cycles, dennis baldocchi, ecosystem, evapotranspiration, factors, fluctuations, global scale, ground-based sensor data, humans, microsoft research escience workshop, modisazure, planet, plant life, sacramento river delta, satellite imagery, state-of-the-art biophysical modeling, water systems

*Researchers at University of California, Berkeley, work with Microsoft Research to analyze vast amounts of data without supercomputers.*

BERKELEY, Calif. — Studying the environment would be simple if it weren’t for one thing: Even an isolated ecosystem is unbelievably complicated. Factors to study include water systems, plant life cycles, carbon dioxide fluctuations, resource use by humans, and far more — and each can be studied at the scale of a plant or of the planet, and measured in an instant or over decades. (more…)

Tag Archives: fluctuations

Widespread Ancient Ocean “Dead Zones” Challenged Early Life

Cloud-Based Computing System Helps Scientists Study the Breathing of the Biosphere