<
https://theconversation.com/warming-seas-can-threaten-the-hidden-relationship-that-supports-seagrass-meadows-278070/>
"On the western side of Lake Macquarie in New South Wales, Australia, sits
Myuna Bay, a quiet bay with meadows of seagrass waving beneath the water. The
most common marine plant species you find there is
Zostera muelleri. It has
long ribbon-like leaves that grow from stems (called rhizomes) buried beneath
the sediment and provides important shelter for small fish, shrimp and crabs.
Although Myuna Bay looks quite normal, it is actually a bit unusual. For
decades, the nearby Eraring power station released warm water into the lake
that was used to cool down their systems, causing water temperatures here to be
consistently 1°C to 3°C higher than nearby sites.
This made the bay a rare natural laboratory for understanding what warming
oceans might mean for coastal ecosystems.
In our new research, published today in the journal
New Phytologist, we used
this setting to investigate what happens to seagrass and the microbes living in
the sediment when ocean temperatures increase in the way climate models predict
they will in the future."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
