Arctic Continental Shelf Has Big Impact for World's Nitrogen Needs (IMAGE)

University of Texas at Austin

Arctic Continental Shelf Has Big Impact for World's Nitrogen Needs

Caption

A sensitive area in the Arctic Ocean is playing an unexpectedly large role in removing extra nitrogen from the ocean. Nitrogen is critical for living things, but too much of it -- as is the case now, because of fertilizers and other human activity -- can be harmful to life. In the first study of its kind in the Arctic, scientists found that the bacteria that remove nitrogen here are responsible for about 5 percent of the world's nitrogen removal in oceans; earlier estimates had been that the figure was closer to 1 percent.

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University of Texas at Austin

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