Deborah Bronk, the new president and CEO of Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, has spent her career studying how nitrogen controls the growth of these microscopic organisms at the base of ocean food webs. Join her July 10 from 5 to 6:30 p.m. at Bigelow Laboratory in East Boothbay for an introduction to her research and a Café Sci discussion entitled, “Nitrogen to the Rescue: How Arctic Ice Reduction is Fertilizing the Sea.”

 

As the global climate warms, the reduction of Arctic sea ice is changing northern ecosystems and increasing processes that produce more usable nitrogen for the microscopic plants that live there. Much as on land, this extra nitrogen acts as a fertilizer and can help the phytoplankton dramatically increase in number. This provides more food for larger organisms and greatly accelerates the rate at which they remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

 

Bigelow Laboratory’s Café Sci is a fun, free way for you to engage with ocean researchers on critical issues and groundbreaking science. This is the first of a six-event series at the laboratory, which will be held each Tuesday from 5 to 6:30 until Aug. 14. You can see the full schedule, learn more, and register online for this popular summer series online at www.bigelow.org/cafesci.