Nature Geoscience 4, 766–770 (2011) doi:10.1038/ngeo1297

Published online 23 October 2011

Wei-Jun Cai and his colleagues analyze to regions that highly influenced by nutrients contained river: the northern Gulf of Mexico and the East China Sea. At the two sites, they look to support that eutrophication can increase the susceptibility of coastal waters to ocean acidification.

Both the northern Gulf of Mexico and East China Sea are shallow shelf environments that receive immense loads of nutrients, organic carbon, and inorganic carbon from two of the world’s largest rivers: the Mississippi River and Changjiang River. These two rivers were observed to contain massive loads of nitrates.

After assessing collected data in the two regions, Wei-Jun saw a widespread development of hypoxia, areas of low pH, high dissolved inorganic carbon, and low carbonate saturation state. Wei-Jun showed that eutrophication in the two bodies of water associated with the development of hypoxia and the acidification of subsurface waters.

This research article will be paramount in explaining why we are testing the hypothesis that we are testing. This article explains that other chemical compounds and ions can effect the acidity of the ocean more than carbon dioxide. The main arguement in this article is that other significant chemical compounds and ions have a great effect on eutrophication, which is turn has a greater influence on the acidity of the coastal oceans, that athropogenic carbon dioxide.

According to Borges and Gypens, marine organisms can respond to ocean acidification through nitrogen gas and nitrogen fixation.  An increase in nitrogen can increase eutrophication, because nitrogen is a nutrient for many photosynthetic organisms and other bacteria. Our group will research any trends in nitrogen ion composition in the coastal oceans of Georgia, to determine if ocean acidificiation is occuring.

In the results section of this primary research article, Borges and gypens concluded that from 1990 to 1998 a decrease in the phosphate ions in a river resulted in a significant decrease in primary productions. They conducted simulations in which they compared other chemical compounds such as nitrogen,  ammonium, phospate, and nitrate all show greater signifcant effects in the change in PH,  a greater change in the saturation state of calcite and a greater change in the saturation state of aragonite.

DOI: 10.4319/lo.2010.55.1.0346