Oni Science
  • Home
  • Environment
  • Humans
  • Nature
  • Physics
  • Space
  • Tech
  • Video
  • Contact Us
    • About us
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Amazon Disclaimer
    • DMCA / Copyrights Disclaimer
Skip to content
Oni Science
Your Daily Science News
  • Environment
  • Humans
  • Nature
  • Physics
  • Space
  • Tech
  • Video
  • Contact Us
    • About us
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Amazon Disclaimer
    • DMCA / Copyrights Disclaimer
Environment

Hidden Forests Found Deep Beneath The Ocean Cover Twice The Area of India

September 16, 2022 by admin 0 Comments

Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter
Share on Pinterest
Share on LinkedIn

Amazon, Borneo, Congo, Daintree. We know the names of many of the world’s largest or most famous rainforests.

And many of us know about the world’s largest span of forests, the boreal forests stretching from Russia to Canada.

But how many of us could name an underwater forest?

Hidden underwater are huge kelp and seaweed forests, stretching much further than we previously realized.

Few are even named. But their lush canopies are home to huge numbers of marine species.

Off the coastline of southern Africa lies the Great African Seaforest, while Australia boasts the Great Southern Reef around its southern reaches.

There are many more vast but unnamed underwater forests all over the world.

Our new research has discovered just how extensive and productive they are. The world’s ocean forests, we found, cover an area twice the size of India.

These seaweed forests face threats from marine heatwaves and climate change. But they may also hold part of the answer, with their ability to grow quickly and sequester carbon.

What are ocean forests?

Underwater forests are formed by seaweeds, which are types of algae. Like other plants, seaweeds grow by capturing the Sun’s energy and carbon dioxide through photosynthesis.

The largest species grow tens of meters high, forming forest canopies that sway in a never-ending dance as swells move through. To swim through one is to see dappled light and shadow and a sense of constant movement.

Just like trees on land, these seaweeds offer habitat, food and shelter to a wide variety of marine organisms.

Large species such as sea-bamboo and giant kelp have gas-filled structures that work like little balloons and help them create vast floating canopies.

Other species relies on strong stems to stay upright and support their photosynthetic blades. Others again, like golden kelp on Australia’s Great Southern Reef, drape over seafloor.

Map of the world with underwater forests
Few of the world’s most productive forests have been recognised and named. (author provided)

How extensive are these forests and how fast do they grow?

Seaweeds have long been known to be among the fastest growing plants on the planet. But to date, it’s been very challenging to estimate how large an area their forests cover.

On land, you can now easily measure forests by satellite. Underwater, it’s much more complicated. Most satellites cannot take measurements at the depths where underwater forests are found.

To overcome this challenge, we relied on millions of underwater records from scientific literature, online repositories, local herbaria and citizen science initiatives.

With this information, we modelled the global distribution of ocean forests, finding they cover between 6 million and 7.2 million square kilometers. That’s larger than the Amazon.

Next, we assessed how productive these ocean forests are – that is, how much they grow. Once again, there were no unified global records. We had to go through hundreds of individual experimental studies from across the globe where seaweed growth rates had been measured by scuba divers.

We found ocean forests are even more productive than many intensely farmed crops such as wheat, rice and corn.

Productivity was highest in temperate regions, which are usually bathed in cool, nutrient-rich water.

Every year, on average, ocean forests in these regions produce 2 to 11 times more biomass per area than these crops

What do our findings mean for the challenges we face?

These findings are encouraging. We could harness this immense productivity to help meet the world’s future food security. Seaweed farms can supplement food production on land and boost sustainable development.

These fast growth rates also mean seaweeds are hungry for carbon dioxide. As they grow, they pull large quantities of carbon from seawater and the atmosphere. Globally, ocean forests may take up as much carbon as the Amazon.

This suggests they could play a role in mitigating climate change. However, not all that carbon may end up sequestered, as this requires seaweed carbon to be locked away from the atmosphere for relatively long periods of time.

First estimates suggest that a sizeable proportion of seaweed could be sequestered in sediments or the deep sea. But exactly how much seaweed carbon ends up sequestered naturally is an area of intense research.

Hard times for ocean forests

Almost all of the extra heat trapped by the 2,400 gigatonnes of greenhouse gases we have emitted so far has gone into our oceans.

This means ocean forests are facing very difficult conditions. Large expanses of ocean forests have recently disappeared off Western Australia, eastern Canada and California, resulting in the loss of habitat and carbon sequestration potential.

Conversely, as sea ice melts and water temperatures warm, some Arctic regions are expected to see expansion of their ocean forests.

These overlooked forests play an crucial, largely unseen role off our coasts. The majority of the world’s underwater forests are unrecognized, unexplored and uncharted.

Without substantial efforts to improve our knowledge, it will not be possible to ensure their protection and conservation – let alone harness the full potential of the many opportunities they provide.The Conversation

Albert Pessarrodona Silvestre, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, The University of Western Australia; Karen Filbee-Dexter, Research Fellow, School of Biological Sciences, The University of Western Australia, and Thomas Wernberg, Professor, The University of Western Australia.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This article was originally published by Sciencealert.com. Read the original article here.

Articles You May Like

Embers of an Ancient Inferno Pinpoint The Worst Extinction in Earth’s History
A Hidden Food Web Exists in The Desert, And It Thrives on Death
Physicists Used Sound Waves to Give a Tiny Sun Its Own Kind of Gravity
Incredible Footage Shows Planets Circling a Star Light-Years Away
Ancient Goo Spills The Secrets of How The Egyptians Mummified Their Dead

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Articles

  • A Hidden Food Web Exists in The Desert, And It Thrives on Death
  • It’s Possible Neanderthals Evolved So They Wouldn’t Smell Their Own Stink, Study Finds
  • We Can Now Hear The ‘Sound’ of One of The Most Beautiful Stars
  • Astronomers Studied More Than 5,000 Black Holes to Figure Out Why They Twinkle
  • Astronomers Find What May Be a Habitable World 31 Light-Years Away
  • Bar Graphs Induce a Hidden Bias in Interpretation, Experiment Shows
  • This Small Australian Marsupial Is Quite Literally Dying For Sex
  • ‘Polluted Realism’: How Monet’s Art Mirrors The Evolution of Smog
  • The First Stars May Have Been Heavier Than 100,000 Suns
  • An Incredible Thing Happens When Dolphins And Humans Team Up

Space

  • We Can Now Hear The ‘Sound’ of One of The Most Beautiful Stars
  • Astronomers Studied More Than 5,000 Black Holes to Figure Out Why They Twinkle
  • Astronomers Find What May Be a Habitable World 31 Light-Years Away
  • The First Stars May Have Been Heavier Than 100,000 Suns
  • Stunning Green Comet Will Be Closest to Earth Today, at Peak Brightness

Physics

  • A Lost Interview With The ‘Father of The Big Bang’ Was Just Discovered
  • This Physicist Says Electrons Spin in Quantum Physics After All. Here’s Why
  • Physicists Break Record Firing a Laser Down Their University Corridor
  • Scientists Have Built a Macroscopic Tractor Beam Using Laser Light
  • Firing a Laser Into The Sky Can Divert Lightning, Experiment Shows

Archives

  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • March 2017
  • November 2016

Categories

  • Environment
  • Humans
  • Nature
  • Physics
  • Space
  • Tech
  • Video

Useful Links

  • Contact Us
  • About us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Amazon Disclaimer
  • DMCA / Copyrights Disclaimer

Recent Posts

  • A Hidden Food Web Exists in The Desert, And It Thrives on Death
  • It’s Possible Neanderthals Evolved So They Wouldn’t Smell Their Own Stink, Study Finds
  • We Can Now Hear The ‘Sound’ of One of The Most Beautiful Stars
  • Astronomers Studied More Than 5,000 Black Holes to Figure Out Why They Twinkle
  • Astronomers Find What May Be a Habitable World 31 Light-Years Away

Copyright © 2023 by Oni Science. All rights reserved. All articles, images, product names, logos, and brands are property of their respective owners. All company, product and service names used in this website are for identification purposes only. Use of these names, logos, and brands does not imply endorsement unless specified. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

Powered by WordPress using DisruptPress Theme.