Furious winds keep the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Anarctica free of snow and ice. Calcites found in the valleys have revealed the secrets of ancient subglacial volcanoes.
Stuart Rankin/Flickr
Melting ice from Antartica could feed vast plankton blooms, trapping carbon in the ocean. To understand this complex mechanism, researchers looked at volcanoes deep under glaciers.
A tank can give a good idea of what will happen out in the wild.
A new study suggests the benefits of a boost to marine plant growth from increased carbon dioxide will be cancelled out by the increased stress to fish species.
Four organisms that show nature isn't so easily categorised.
We think of coral reefs as a diverse ecosystem, but each coral is an entire and complex microworld of organisms imperceptible to our eyes.
Floriaan Devloo-Delva
Populations of certain species collapse long before a wider ecological disaster, says new research.
A mass proliferation of Noctiluca scintillans, a red tide forming dinoflagellate at Clovelly Beach, NSW. It can form dense aggregations that deplete oxygen and produce ammonia.
Gurjeet Kohli
They give us part of the air we breathe but microscopic phytoplankton can also be toxic. They are also on the move thanks to climate change so a new Australian database hopes to monitor any changes.
Corals north of Cairns have been hit hardest by the recent bleaching.
AAP Image/ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Kerry
An estimated one-third of corals have now died in the parts of the Great Barrier Reef hit hardest by bleaching, meaning recovery could take years or even decades.
The economics of making biofuels from algae no longer add up, but a lesson from the oil industry could make them viable.
Bleached coral can take on luminously beautiful pink and purple hues - but don’t be deceived, these corals are under stress.
Justin Marshall/coralwatch.org
The bleaching hitting the Great Barrier Reef not only harms corals. As these close-up photos show, it also deprives many other species of a home and livelihood.
Algae in water and soils can be a great forensic tool.
Couperfield /shutterstock
We have the technology to make oil from algae, rather than digging up crude oil from organisms that lived billions of years ago. But bringing it to market will take a force of economic and political will.
Food security is threatened when irrigation systems get worn out by biofouling as a result of smart dirt.
AAP
Assaf Vardi, Weizmann Institute of Science and Ilan Koren, Weizmann Institute of Science
Algae isn’t just found in your garden pond or local river. Sometimes it explodes into vast “blooms” far out to sea, that can be the size of a small country. Such algal blooms can match even a rainforest…
Enormous algal blooms off Cornwall, which can lead to low oxygen waters.
NASA
The world’s oceans are plagued with the problem of “dead zones”, areas of high nutrients (such as nitrogen and phosphorus) in which plankton blooms cause a major reduction of oxygen levels in the water…
It is no secret that climate change is transforming the polar regions. Retreating glaciers, melting ice-caps and changing sea ice patterns are frequently reported in both the Arctic and Antarctic, and…
Global warming is having a significant impact on marine life, as many marine organisms are adapted to live only within the average temperature range of their habitats. This applies to larger fish and sea…
