Access

News and Views

Nature 445, 159-160 (11 January 2007) | doi:10.1038/445159a; Published online 10 January 2007

Open Innovation Challenges

Oceanography: A marine nitrogen cycle fix?

Douglas G. Capone1 & Angela N. Knapp1

Top

Some of our suppositions about the marine nitrogen cycle may be wrong. An innovative analysis of nutrients at the ocean's surface reveals a feedback mechanism that might hold the whole cycle in balance.

The flow of nitrogen compounds between the oceans and the atmosphere is central to life, as nitrogen is a fundamental component of biomass and is essential for many biological processes. Although we have learned much about the nitrogen cycle of the oceans, two burning questions remain unanswered: is the marine nitrogen budget currently in balance, and are the processes that add and remove nitrogen to and from the seas closely linked?

  1. Douglas G. Capone and Angela N. Knapp are in the Department of Biological Sciences and at the Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA. Douglas G. Capone is currently on sabbatical at the Laboratoire d'Océanographie de Villefranche, France.
    Email: capone@usc.edu
    Email: angelakn@usc.edu

MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS

These links to content published by NPG are automatically generated.

NEWS AND VIEWS

Nitrogen cycle Oceans apart

Nature News and Views (03 Sep 2009)

Is the ocean losing nitrate?

Nature News and Views (31 Aug 1995)

See all 5 matches for News And Views

RESEARCH

Spatial coupling of nitrogen inputs and losses in the ocean

Nature Article (11 Jan 2007)

Reduced nitrogen fixation in the glacial ocean inferred from changes in marine nitrogen and phosphorus inventories

Nature Letters to Editor (10 Jan 2002)

Iron and phosphorus co-limit nitrogen fixation in the eastern tropical North Atlantic

Nature Letters to Editor (20 May 2004)

See all 16 matches for Research