Emission-Excitation Matrices

Phytoplankton are microscopic photosynthesising organisms which live in water. In favourable environmental conditions they have a very high rate of reproduction. They are eaten by microscopic animals called zooplankton. In an investigation, samples of water were removed from a lake at intervals over a twelve-month period and the biomasses of these organisms were determined. The results are shown in the graph.

Abstract: Photosynthesis, the conversion of inorganic carbon into organic glucose molecules using light energy, is one of the most biologically important processes on Earth. It is imperative to study how the rapidly increasing carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution may affect photosynthesis of photoautotrophs. In this experiment, a look is taken at the question: does inorganic carbon availability affect photosynthetic activity. This experiment uses bicarbonate as the inorganic carbon source, and analyzes how varying concentrations of bicarbonate may affect the photosynthetic activity of the South American aquatic plant Egeria densa (also known as Elodea densa) by measuring its O2 production in distilled water and 0.1%, 0.4%, 0.6%, 0.8%, and 1.0% sodium bicarbonate solutions. T-tests between the control (distilled water) and each bicarbonate treatment are conducted using the online program GraphPad. All tests results in a p-value greater than 0.05 and a calculated t-value greater than the critical t-value, thus rejecting the null hypothesis, indicating that inorganic

“Since the beginning of the industrial era, the ocean has absorbed some 525 billion tons of CO2 from the atmosphere, presently around 22 million tons per day” (Ocean Portal, n.d). This number is expected to increase forevermore as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels increase and the effects of Climate Change worsen. At first, the idea of our oceans absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere may sound great, however, scientists have been quick to learn otherwise. High concentrations of carbon dioxide in oceans can have detrimental effects on the ocean chemistry and marine ecosystems (Hardt; Safina, 2008). Marine ecosystems are greatly complex and depend on every marine organism to function properly, any change can put the whole ecosystem at risk. For example, the increase of carbon dioxide in our oceans is responsible for the dissolving of “brittle star” skeletal parts, which has in effect caused food scarcity for many fish, crabs, shrimp, and other starfish (Leu, 2013). Furthermore, these marine ecosystems are very important to humans- being the primary food source for millions around the world and having an economic market worth trillions of dollars (Hardt; Safina, 2008). Part of keeping these ecosystems safe is to understand how they work and how projected changes can harm marine organisms.

Diversity and abundance of scavenger species in seagrass beds in comparison to intertidal flat zonations in estuarine environments.

Recent research has suggested the P. marinus may be a key contributor to evolution. Since the organism is incredibly abundant, it also produces an abundant amount of oxygen. Therefore, scientists propose that it has produced much of the oxygen we currently breathe, incited the explosion of early life within our oceans, and fueled the atmosphere’s ancient rise of oxygen. Researchers have also observed that there are differing ecotypes of P. marinus. Each ecotype has a unique hue (bright green, yellow, etc..) that corresponds to its depth. This makes the microbe extremely efficient while photosynthesizing. Additionally, this microbe has the power to regulate CO₂ levels that contribute to global warming, due to its part in the carbon cycle. P. marinus is also a key factor in the ocean’s food webs. It tends to thrive in nutrient-poor regions, making it a valuable food source in the ocean’s web. P. marinus also secretes a variety of peptides that in turn cause other oceanic microbes to secrete an enzyme. This enzyme is responsible for detoxifying reactive oxygen

G., Cong-Qiang, L., WeiDong, Z., Minella, M., Vione, D., Kunshan, G., & ... Hiroshi, S. (2016). Reviews and Syntheses: Ocean acidification and its potential impacts on marine ecosystems. Biogeosciences, 13(6), 1767. doi:10.5194/bg-13-1767-2016

The photos show that zooplanktons, rotifer, cladoceranr and copepod, could take in three types of MPs (0.1,1,9.9 µm) overtly. But all organisms no MPs in vivo under 101 µm diameter exposure surroundings were observed by fluorescence microscope, so there were not pictures printed here. Many freshwater and marine species such as annelids, crustaceans, ostracods and gastropods were reported that could uptake MPs(Imhof et al., 2013b; Setala et al., 2014). In the present study, the uptake of microspheres after 24h exposure in three kinds of zooplankton, rotifers, cladocerans and copepods, were captured by the fluorescence microscope. The observations displayed that rotifer gained MPs though test environment with remnant digestive production remaining in mastax, cloaca, (Fig.1 A, D, G), while cladocerans absorbed MPs by filter feeding so that MPs were discovered explicitly in their filter-feeding and intestinal tract (Fig.1 B, E, H), copepod also can procure three kinds of diameter MPs in a high concentration polystyrene microspheres condition, then persisted in digestive tract (Fig.1 C, F, I). Fig.1 suggests samples from wild fresh water had the capability of gaining fluorescence particles under the surroundings with MPs. They can uptake three types of microspheres apparently, 0.1,1,9.9 µm, out of 101 µm diameter. Early researches focused on selection at plastic sizes

Chlorophyll-a is a specific form of Chlorophyll, used in oxygenic photosynthesis. Measurement and determination of this parameter are the basic analysis to evaluate the characteristics of algae blooms in many research works in the world. Unfortunately, Chlorophyll-a represents just the whole quantity of photosynthesis pigment released from all algae and micro-plants present in water, hence it cannot help to distinguish cyanobacteria existence among all living micro plants and algae in the waterbody. To be able to define and confirm the existence of Cyanobacteria species in the composition of aquatic microalgae, another pigment form, Phycocyanin, is used. Phycocyanin is the pigment, which differs cyanobacteria species from another planktonic species, and could give us a real picture of quantity of cyanobacterial genera in the water. Phycocyanin is actually a pigment-protein complex from the light-harvesting phycobiliprotein family, along with allophycocyanin and phycoerythrin. It is considered as an accessory pigment to

Using this approach, we estimated percent contribution of terrestrial organic carbon sources in juvenile Chinook salmon and interpreted the dynamics of its use spatially and temporally in the Merced River. Our research indicated that the contribution of the terrestrial vegetation to juvenile Chinook salmon growth was highly variable across locations and years. In the river-marsh-estuary San Francisco complex, Cloern et al. (2002) concluded that carbon stable isotopes could not be used as biomarkers for tracing the origins of organic matter, due to high variability in isotope ratios within-plant groups and high dissimilarity between isotopic signatures of primary producers and their organic-matter pools in the seston and sediments. Research in aquatic ecosystems using stable isotopes has shown that there can be significant between and even within-year variation in the isotopic signatures of primary production sources (Post

Thus, the use of phycocyanin (PC) – a unique pigment present on freshwater cyanobacteria – is proposed for a quick estimator of cyanotoxins (Reynolds, 2006; Simis et al., 2005). Because of that, studies have been focusing on the use of PC fluorescence properties to identify PC in vivo, since it is excited in lower wavelengths (between 590-630nm regions of the visible spectrum) and it is emitted around 650nm (Gregor et al., 2007). Therefore, the monitoring of PC using in vivo fluorimeters can provide a quick response for the risk assessment and management of cyanotoxins in freshwaters.

In order to understand harmful algae blooms, it is necessary to understand the organisms responsible for them. In the United States, the most common place for them to occur is in the Gulf of Mexico, meaning that the situation there should be further examined. There, the organism responsible is known Karenia brevis, a type of floating algae, or dinoflagellate, found on the western coast of Florida and the eastern coast of Texas. Dinoflagellates are miniscule but can, at maximum have at least "60 million organisms per litre” at once, a large group for such a small section of ocean. With such numbers, it is understandable how, if the organism were harmful, such a situation could become dangerous. Unfortunately, K. brevis is harmful; it becomes dangerous when it is broken apart, releasing a neurotoxin known as brevotoxin, a “tasteless,

Spectroscopy is a field of chemistry used to analyze chemicals in food and pharmaceuticals all the way to determining the age and compositions of the stars and galaxies (Santiago et al. 2015). For the lab we performed over the past two weeks we were using spectroscopy to test and understand the interactions of UV-visible radiation and organic molecules in commercial products such as food dyes. The spectroscopy is used in commercial products to find the exact concentrations of each dye, how much UV-light is absorbed correlates to how concentrated the dye is in the commercial product; or in our case how much concentrated dye is in each solution. We were give three dyes to perform the experiment they were red dye 3, yellow dye 5 and

Long chain n-alkanes (n-C11_35) were spanned for all surface sediment samples and demonstrated large variation among some sites in particular at Kharg coral reef (Table 5, Fig 5.b). Sediments collected from sites (KH.ST1 to KH.ST9 and LA.ST1 to LA.ST9), located at the onshore, and the another sites situated at the offshore (KH.ST9 to KH.ST16 and LA.ST9 to LA.ST16), had much higher n-alkane concentrations, ranging from 986.94 to 1810.16 and 1752.45 to 3798.56 at Kharg reef in dry and wet seasons respectively, while varied from 523.99 to 1361.16 in summer and 1275.99 to 2324.16 in winter at Lark reef. Compared with the sites collected near the coast, concentrations were lower, ranging from 541.31 to 1200.59 and 405.92 to 1020.61 in Kharg

Colored dissolved organic matter (CDOM) is an optically active component of total dissolved organic matter (DOM), absorbing light strongly in the UV and visible spectral range, hence influencing light availability in the aquatic environments [1]. Although CDOM protects marine biota from the harmful effects of UV radiation in surface waters [2], it can also adversely affect primary production and the ecosystem health by reducing the quality and the amount of photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) to phytoplankton [3,4]. In estuarine environments, CDOM is primarily of terrestrial origin and is characterized by the presence of humic acid produced by bacterial decomposition of plant litter, animals and organically rich soils [5], whereas in-situ production of CDOM by bacterial and viral decomposition, excretion, grazing, and primary production dominates in oceanic waters [6-9]. Coastal bays are important transition zones between marine and terrigenous environments supplying elevated amounts of sediments, dissolved organic matter, and nutrients to the coastal waters, making them optically complex and challenging for ocean color remote sensing applications. For example, previous studies [8,10-12] have attributed errors in satellite-based estimates of chlorophyll-a to elevated levels of CDOM in coastal waters.

Benthic macroinvertebrates have been used to assess the health of aquatic environments. Quality analysis involves looking at benthic species composition and organization within the stream (Resh and Unzicke 1975). Different macroinvertebrates have differing sensitivities to pollutant, with some being more susceptible to environmental toxins than others (Metcalfe 1989). Such methods group macroinvertebrates in regards to their tolerance to pollution.