Nodularia bloom

Description:

Description: English: On Aug. 11, 2015, a NASA satellite captured this false-color image of a large bloom of cyanobacteria (Nodularia) swirling in the Baltic Sea. These cyanobacteria fix inorganic atmospheric nitrogen (N2) into a form available to Life, a process fundamental for marine ecosystems. Nitrogen fixation becomes even more important when the state of oxygenation of the ocean declines. See: Naafs BDA, FM Monteiro, A Pearson, MB Higgins, RD Pancost, and A Ridgwell (2019) "Fundamentally different global marine nitrogen cycling in response to severe ocean deoxygenation," PNAS. doi:10.1073/pnas.1905553116. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory/USGS. Date: 11 August 2015. Source: https://phys.org/news/2019-11-oxygen-ocean-disrupt-fundamental-biological.html. Author: NASA.