OCEAN ACIDIFICATION
BACKGROUND:
Covering about more than 70% of the surface of the Earth, the oceans are one of the most important and distinguishing characters of the planet Earth. The oceans play a central role in the Earth’s major processes. They are the hosts of millions of species of organisms that inhabit millions of ecosystems.
Carbon dioxide released due a variety of human activities has decreased the pH of water in the ocean. Evidences show that previously surface waters of oceans were slightly alkaline, now these are becoming more and more acidic. Previously the average pH of ocean water was 8.2 before the era of industrialization. Currently there is a decrease of 0.1 which actually represents 30% increase in the acidity of the
…show more content…
It is estimated that pH will continue to drop till 0.3 to 0.4 by 2100. (Jackson 2010)
BIOLOGICAL IMPACTS OF OCEAN ACIDIFICATION:
Ocean acidification has many harmful impacts on living organisms. Ocean acicdifcation changes the ocean chemistry and this can disrupt the entire marine food web. It affects the life of organisms inside the water in a variety of ways. Few impacts of ocean acidification of different organisms are discussed briefly below. • Effects of ocean acidification on phytoplankton: -
On land, the plants prepare their own food by photosynthesis, these photosynthetic plants take up carbon dioxide for the process of photosynthesis from diffusion. Although there are some examples of plants which take up CO2 actively. The result is that an increase in atmospheric CO2 generally has a positive effect on their photosynthesis and their growth.
One the other hand, most marine plants take in their CO2 for photosynthesis actively by concentrating mechanisms in the form of CO2 or bicarbonate or both of these. Due to this reason the changes which occur in the pH of ocean water and CO2 content of water has very less effect on their