Sea animals like seastars, clams, and snails help bacteria in the Arctic to remove excess nitrogen in the ocean. University of Texas Marine Science Institute
PORT ARANSAS, Texas - Areas of the Arctic play a larger role than previously thought in the global nitrogen cycle'the process responsible for keeping a critical element necessary for life flowing between the atmosphere, the land and oceans. The finding is reported in a new study of the continental shelf in the Arctic Ocean published Wednesday in the journal Nature . In the new study, marine chemists and biologists from The University of Texas at Austin discovered that seabed microbes remove substantial quantities of nitrogen from the Arctic Ocean. Although the Arctic accounts for only a little more than 1 percent of the world's continental shelves (where most nitrogen is removed), this region accounts for about 5 percent of the global ocean nitrogen removal, data researchers collected for the study show. Scientists think that, in the past, the oceans maintained a reliable balance between nitrogen sources and nitrogen removal. This global nitrogen budget indicates that overall ocean nitrogen levels are higher now than ever before due to human activity, such as fertilizer run-off and sewage into the oceans. This perturbation throws the budget out of balance.
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