In an effort to better understand how the ocean stores carbon, researchers at UC Santa Barbara and their collaborators have uncovered results that challenge long-held ideas about how carbon dioxide is “fixed” in the dark, deep sea. Led by UCSB microbial oceanographer Alyson Santoro, the team reports in Nature Geoscience that their work helps close a long-standing gap between estimates of nitrogen availability and measurements of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) fixation in deep waters. “Something that we’ve been trying to get a better handle on is how much of the…
