Desert Dust & Oceans

August 14, 2014 By: Erin Block

New research out of the University of South Carolina is shedding light on iron levels in the world’s oceans, revealing that “life in the deep ocean depended on an annual delivery of fertilizer from one of the world’s emptiest and most parched regions”: the Sahara Desert. And at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, researchers are linking bacteria and minerals in dust from the Sahara desert to the Bahama Banks ecosystem. Via Adventure Journal and New Scientist.