The FORCIS database: A global census of planktonic Foraminifera from ocean waters.

Planktonic Foraminifera are unique paleo-environmental indicators through their excellent fossil record in ocean sediments. Their distribution and diversity are affected by different environmental factors including anthropogenically forced ocean and climate change. Until now, historical changes in their distribution have not been fully assessed at the global scale.

Field-Validated Detection of Brown Tide Blooms in the Indian River Lagoon, Florida, Using Sentinel-3A OLCI and Ground-Based Hyperspectral Spectroradiometers.

Frequent blooms in the Indian River Lagoon (IRL), Florida, have devastated populations of seagrass and marine life and threaten public health. To substantiate a more reliable remote sensing early-warning system for harmful algal blooms, we apply varimax-rotated principal component analysis (VPCA) to 12 images spanning ~1.5 years.

Validation of Growth Layer Group (GLG) depositional rate using daily incremental growth lines in the dentin of beluga (Delphinapterus leucas (Pallas, 1776)) teeth.

Counts of Growth Layer Groups (GLGs) in the dentin of marine mammal teeth are widely used as indicators of age. In most marine mammals, observations document that GLGs are deposited yearly, but in beluga whales, some studies have supported the view that two GLGs are deposited each year. Our understanding of beluga life-history differs substantially depending on assumptions regarding the timing of GLG deposition; therefore, resolving this issue has important considerations for population assessments.

Global solutions to regional problems: Collecting global expertise to address the problem of harmful cyanobacterial blooms. A Lake Erie case study.

In early August 2014, the municipality of Toledo, OH (USA) issued a 'do not drink' advisory on their water supply directly affecting over 400,000 residential customers and hundreds of businesses (Wilson, 2014). This order was attributable to levels of microcystin, a potent liver toxin, which rose to 2.5μgL in finished drinking water.

Drought variability in the Pacific Northwest from a 6,000-yr lake sediment record.

We present a 6,000-yr record of changing water balance in the Pacific Northwest inferred from measurements of carbonate δ(18)O and grayscale on a sediment core collected from Castor Lake, Washington. This subdecadally resolved drought record tracks the 1,500-yr tree-ring-based Palmer Drought Severity Index reconstructions of Cook et al. [Cook ER, Woodhouse CA, Eakin CM, Meko DM, Stahle DW (2004) Science 306:1015-1018] in the Pacific Northwest and extends our knowledge back to 6,000 yr B.

Dynamical response of the tropical Pacific Ocean to solar forcing during the early Holocene.

We present a high-resolution magnesium/calcium proxy record of Holocene sea surface temperature (SST) from off the west coast of Baja California Sur, Mexico, a region where interannual SST variability is dominated today by the influence of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Temperatures were lowest during the early to middle Holocene, consistent with documented eastern equatorial Pacific cooling and numerical model simulations of orbital forcing into a La Niña-like state at that time. The early Holocene SSTs were also characterized by millennial-scale fluctuations that correlate with cosmogenic nuclide proxies of solar variability, with inferred solar minima corresponding to El Niño-like (warm) conditions, in apparent agreement with the theoretical "ocean dynamical thermostat" response of ENSO to exogenous radiative forcing.

Microevolution and speciation in Thalassiosira weissflogii (Bacillariophyta).

In this study five different molecular markers were used to: (1) infer the phylogeographic differentiation of Thalassiosira weissflogii in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans; and (2) address the biological species status of the inferred geographic lineages. The results of the ribosomal RNA data analyses suggested that the Hawaiian isolate evolved first after which the Indonesian and the Atlantic/California strains diverged. In contrast, the tree derived from the partial sexually induced gene 1 (Sig1) data exhibited an initial divergence between the Eastern Atlantic/Western Atlantic/California and the Hawaiian/Indonesian groups after which the latter evolved into the Hawaiian and Indonesian lineages.

Marine radiocarbon evidence for the mechanism of deglacial atmospheric CO2 rise.

We reconstructed the radiocarbon activity of intermediate waters in the eastern North Pacific over the past 38,000 years. Radiocarbon activity paralleled that of the atmosphere, except during deglaciation, when intermediate-water values fell by more than 300 per mil. Such a large decrease requires a deglacial injection of very old waters from a deep-ocean carbon reservoir that was previously well isolated from the atmosphere.