Uncovering the intricacies of microbial community dynamics at Helgoland Roads at the end of a spring bloom using automated sampling and 18S meta-barcoding.

In May 2016, the remote-controlled Automated Filtration System for Marine Microbes (AUTOFIM) was implemented in parallel to the Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) observatory Helgoland Roads in the German Bight. We collected samples for characterization of dynamics within the eukaryotic microbial communities at the end of a phytoplankton bloom via 18S meta-barcoding. Understanding consequences of environmental change for key marine ecosystem processes, such as phytoplankton bloom dynamics requires information on biodiversity and species occurrences with adequate temporal and taxonomic resolution via time series observations.

Winter weather controls net influx of atmospheric CO on the north-west European shelf.

Shelf seas play an important role in the global carbon cycle, absorbing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO) and exporting carbon (C) to the open ocean and sediments. The magnitude of these processes is poorly constrained, because observations are typically interpolated over multiple years. Here, we used 298500 observations of CO fugacity (fCO) from a single year (2015), to estimate the net influx of atmospheric CO as 26.

Estimation of the human impact on nutrient loads carried by the Elbe River.

The reunification of Germany led to dramatically reduced emissions of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) to the environment. The aim of the present study was to examine how these exceptional decreases influenced the amounts of nutrients carried by the Elbe River to the North Sea. In particular, we attempted to extract anthropogenic signals from time series of riverine loads of nitrogen and phosphorus by developing a normalization technique that enabled removal of natural fluctuations caused by several weather-dependent variables.