SATELITE IMAGE OF AFRICA

SATELITE IMAGE OF AFRICA

AFRICA'S LOCATION

AFRICA LOCATION

Atlantic Ocean, Atlas Mountains, Gulf of Aden, Gulf of Aqaba, Gulf of Guinea, Gulf of Suez, Indian Ocean, Lake Chad, Lake Kariba, Lake Malawi, Lake Tanganyika, Lake Victoria, Libyan Desert, Mediterranean Sea, Mozambique Channel, Nile River, Red Sea and Strait of Gibraltar.

World Earthquake Map

Earthquake Safety Tips How to Survive an Earthquake

Earthquake Safety Tips

How to Survive an Earthquake

A little knowledge and a few precautionary measures can enormously increase your chances of surviving an earthquake - or any other type of hazard. The keys are education and preparing in advance. The earthquake safety tips below will not make you an expert. However, they could make a life-saving difference if you find yourself in an earthquake situation. Invest in your personal safety by studying below.

Before the Earthquake:

Learn how to survive during the ground motion. This is described in the "During the Earthquake" section below. The earthquake safety tips there will prepare you for the fast action needed - most earthquakes are over in seconds so knowing what to do instinctively is very important. Teach all members of your family about earthquake safety. This includes: 1) the actions you should take when an earthquake occurs, 2) the safe places in a room such as under a strong desk, along interior walls, and 3) places to avoid such as near windows, large mirrors, hanging objects, heavy furniture and fireplaces. Stock up on emergency supplies. These include: battery operated radio (and extra batteries), flashlights (and extra batteries), first aid kit, bottled water, two weeks food and medical supplies, blankets, cooking fuel, tools needed to turn off your gas, water and electric utilities. Arrange your home for safety: Store heavy objects on lower shelves and store breakable objects in cabnents with latched doors. Don't hang heavy mirrors or pictures above where people frequently sit or sleep. Anchor heavy appliances and furniture such as water heaters, refrigerators and bookcases. Store flamable liquids away from potential ignition sources such as water heaters, stoves and furnaces. Get Educated. Learn what to do during an earthquake (see below). Then you will be ready for the fast action needed. Make sure that all members of your family have this important education. Learn where the main turn-offs are for your water, gas and electricity. Know how to turn them off and the location of any needed tools.

During the Earthquake:

If you are indoors, stay there. Quickly move to a safe location in the room such as under a strong desk, a strong table, or along an interior wall. The goal is to protect yourself from falling objects and be located near the structural strong points of the room. Avoid taking cover near windows, large mirrors, hanging objects, heavy furniture, heavy appliances or fireplaces. If you are cooking, turn off the stove and take cover. If you are outdoors, move to an open area where falling objects are unlikely to strike you. Move away from buildings, powerlines and trees. If you are driving, slow down smoothly and stop on the side of the road. Avoid stopping on or under bridges and overpasses, or under power lines, trees and large signs. Stay in your car.

After the Earthquake:

Check for injuries, attend to injuries if needed, help ensure the safety of people around you. Check for damage. If your building is badly damaged you should leave it until it has been inspected by a safety professional. If you smell or hear a gas leak, get everyone outside and open windows and doors. If you can do it safely, turn off the gas at the meter. Report the leak to the gas company and fire department. Do not use any electrical appliances because a tiny spark could ignite the gas. If the power is out, unplug major appliances to prevent possible damage when the power is turned back on. If you see sparks, frayed wires, or smell hot insulation turn off electricity at the main fuse box or breaker. If you will have to step in water to turn off the electricity you should call a professional to turn it off for you.

NASA Finds Abundant Evidence of Water on Mars

NASA Finds Abundant Evidence of Water on Mars Sedimentary and mineral evidence of lakes, rivers, deltas and clay deposits.

Two studies based on data from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have revealed that the Red Planet once hosted vast lakes, flowing rivers and a variety of other wet environments that had the potential to support life. One study, published in the July 17 issue of Nature, shows that vast regions of the ancient highlands of Mars, which cover about half the planet, contain clay minerals, which can form only in the presence of water. Volcanic lavas buried the clay-rich regions during subsequent, drier periods of the planet's history, but impact craters later exposed them at thousands of locations across Mars. The data for the study derives from images taken by the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars, or CRISM, and other instruments on the orbiter. "The big surprise from these new results is how pervasive and long-lasting Mars' water was, and how diverse the wet environments were," said Scott Murchie, CRISM principal investigator at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. The clay-like minerals, called phyllosilicates, preserve a record of the interaction of water with rocks dating back to what is called the Noachian period of Mars' history, approximately 4.6 billion to 3.8 billion years ago. This period corresponds to the earliest years of the solar system, when Earth, the moon and Mars sustained a cosmic bombardment by comets and asteroids. Rocks of this age have largely been destroyed on Earth by plate tectonics. They are preserved on the moon, but were never exposed to liquid water. The phyllosilicate-containing rocks on Mars preserve a unique record of liquid water environments possibly suitable for life in the early solar system. "The minerals present in Mars' ancient crust show a variety of wet environments," said John Mustard, a member of the CRISM team from Brown University, and lead author of the Nature study. "In most locations the rocks are lightly altered by liquid water, but in a few locations they have been so altered that a great deal of water must have flushed though the rocks and soil. This is really exciting because we're finding dozens of sites where future missions can land to understand if Mars was ever habitable and if so, to look for signs of past life." Another study, published in the June 2 issue of Nature Geosciences, finds that the wet conditions on Mars persisted for a long time. Thousands to millions of years after the clays formed, a system of river channels eroded them out of the highlands and concentrated them in a delta where the river emptied into a crater lake slightly larger than California's Lake Tahoe, approximately 25 miles in diameter. "The distribution of clays inside the ancient lakebed shows that standing water must have persisted for thousands of years," says Bethany Ehlmann, another member of the CRISM team from Brown. Ehlmann is lead author of the study of an ancient lake within a northern-Mars impact basin called Jezero Crater. "Clays are wonderful at trapping and preserving organic matter, so if life ever existed in this region, there's a chance of its chemistry being preserved in the delta." CRISM's high spatial and spectral resolutions are better than any previous spectrometer sent to Mars and reveal variations in the types and composition of the phyllosilicate minerals. By combining data from CRISM and the orbiter's Context Imager and High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, the team identified three principal classes of water-related minerals dating to the early Noachian period. The classes are aluminum-phyllosilicates, hydrated silica or opal, and the more common and widespread iron/magnesium-phyllosilicates. The variations in the minerals suggest that different processes, or different types of watery environments, created them. "Our whole team is turning our findings into a list of sites where future missions could land to look for organic chemistry and perhaps determine whether life ever existed on Mars," said Murchie. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Applied Physics Laboratory operates the CRISM instrument in coordination with an international team of researchers from universities, government and the private sector.

Assessment of Undiscovered Oil Resources in the Devonian-Mississippian Bakken Shale

Assessment of Undiscovered Oil Resources in the Devonian-Mississippian Bakken Shale

Formation, Williston Basin Province, Montana and North Dakota, 2008 This article is republished from a USGS Oil and Gas Fact Sheet - April, 2008 Abstract Using a geology-based assessment methodology, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated mean undiscovered volumes of 3.65 billion barrels of oil, 1.85 trillion cubic feet of associated/dissolved natural gas, and 148 million barrels of natural gas liquids in the Bakken Shale Formation of the Williston Basin Province, Montana and North Dakota.

Introduction The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) completed an assessment of the undiscovered oil and associated gas resources of the Upper Devonian–Lower Mississippian Bakken Formation in the U.S. portion of the Williston Basin of Montana and North Dakota and within the Williston Basin Province (Figure 1). The assessment is based on geologic elements of a total petroleum system (TPS) that include: (1) source-rock distribution, thickness, organic richness, maturation, petroleum generation, and migration; (2) reservoir-rock type (conventional or continuous), distribution, and quality; and (3) character of traps and time of formation with respect to petroleum generation and migration. Detailed framework studies in stratigraphy and structural geology and the modeling of petroleum geochemistry, combined with historical exploration and production analyses, were used to aid in the estimation of the undiscovered, technically recoverable oil and associated gas resources of the Bakken Formation in the United States. Using this framework, the USGS defined a Bakken-Lodgepole TPS (fig. 1) and seven assessment units (AU) within the TPS. For the Bakken Formation, the undiscovered oil and associated gas resources within six of these assessment units were quantitatively estimated (fig. 2, table 1). A conventional AU within the Lodgepole Formation was not assessed.. Bakken Shale Formation and Bakken-Lodgepole Total Petroleum System The Upper Devonian–Lower Mississippian Bakken Formation is a thin but widespread unit within the central and deeper portions of the Williston Basin in Montana, North Dakota, and the Canadian Provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The formation consists of three members: (1) lower shale member, (2) middle sandstone member, and (3) upper shale member. Each succeeding member is of greater geographic extent than the underlying member. Both the upper and lower shale members are organic-rich marine shale of fairly consistent lithology; they are the petroleum source rocks and part of the continuous reservoir for hydrocarbons produced from the Bakken Formation. The middle sandstone member varies in thickness, lithology, and petrophysical properties, and local development of matrix porosity enhances oil production in both continuous and conventional Bakken reservoirs. Within Using a geology-based assessment methodology, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated mean undiscovered volumes of 3.65 billion barrels of oil, 1.85 trillion cubic feet of associated/dissolved natural gas, and 148 million barrels of natural gas liquids in the Bakken Formation of the Williston Basin Province, Montana and North Dakota.the Bakken-Lodgepole TPS, the upper and lower shale members of the Bakken Formation are also the source for oil produced from reservoirs of the Mississippian Lodgepole Formation.

Geologic Model and Assessment Units The geologic model used to define AUs and to assess the Bakken Formation resources generally involves thermal maturity of the Bakken shale source rocks, petrophysical character of the middle sandstone member, and structural complexity of the basin. Most important to the Bakken-Lodgepole TPS and the continuous AUs within it are (1) the geographic extent of the Bakken Formation oil generation window (fig. 2), (2) the occurrence and distribution of vertical and horizontal fractures, and (3) the matrix porosity within the middle sandstone member. The area of the oil generation window for the Bakken continuous reservoir was determined by contouring both hydrogen index and well-log resistivity values of the upper shale member, which is youngest and of greatest areal extent. The area of the oil generation window for the Bakken Formation was divided into five continuous AUs: (1) Elm Coulee–Billings Nose AU, (2) Central Basin–Poplar Dome AU, (3) Nesson–Little Knife Structural AU, (4) Eastern Expulsion Threshold AU, and (5) Northwest Expulsion Threshold AU. A sixth hypothetical conventional AU, a Middle Sandstone Member AU, was defined external to the area of oil generation.

Resource Summary The USGS assessed undiscovered oil and associated gas resources in five continuous (unconventional) AUs and one conventional AU for the Bakken Formation (fig. 2; table 1). For continuous oil resources, the USGS estimated a total mean resource of 3.65 billion barrels of oil, which combines means of 410 million barrels in the Elm Coulee–Billings Nose AU, 485 million barrels in the Central Basin–Poplar Dome AU, 909 million barrels in the Nesson–Little Knife Structural AU, 973 million barrels in the Eastern Expulsion Threshold AU, and 868 million barrels in the Northwest Expulsion Threshold AU. A mean resource of 4 million barrels was estimated for the conventional Middle Sandstone Member AU. The assessment of the Bakken Formation indicates that most of the undiscovered oil resides within a continuous composite reservoir that is distributed across the entire area of the oil generation window (fig. 2) and includes all members of the Bakken Formation. At the time of this assessment, only a limited number of wells have produced from the Bakken continuous reservoir in the Central Basin–Poplar Dome AU, the Eastern Expulsion Threshold AU, and the Northwest Expulsion Threshold AU. Therefore, there is significant geologic uncertainty in these estimates, which is reflected in the range of estimates for oil (table 1). Bakken Shale Formation, Williston Basin Province Assessment Team Richard M. Pollastro (Bakken Formation Task Leader; pollastro@usgs.gov), Troy A. Cook, Laura N. R. Roberts, Christopher J. Schenk, Michael D. Lewan, Lawrence O. Anna, Stephanie B. Gaswirth, Paul G. Lillis, Timothy R. Klett, and Ronald R. Charpentier.

Recent Hawaii Volcano Photos - Kilauea Eruption

Recent Hawaii Volcano Photos - Kilauea Eruption Photos of lava flows and more by the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.

The photos above were taken by staff of the United States Geological Survey and the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.

Arctic Ocean Map and Bathymetric Chart

Arctic Ocean Map and Bathymetric Chart

Within the last few years a significant amount of interest has developed in the Arctic Ocean and its features. Three factors are important in driving this new level of interest in the Arctic. First, an enormous amount of oil, natural gas and other resources are thought to be held within the Arctic Ocean's floor. The United States Geological Survey estimates that up to 25% of the world's remaining oil and natural gas resource might be held within the Arctic Region. Second, global warming is starting to reduce the extent and thickness of the Arctic's sea ice. If the current trend continues, the Northwest Passage might be open to standard ships during summer within the next couple of decades and the Arctic could be ice-free in summer by midway through the current century. Third, the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea allows nations to extend their coastal economic zone beyond 350 nautical miles - if they can acquire scientific data that demonstrates that additional areas are a natural extension of their continent. Many nations are fielding scientific missions in hopes of extending their Arctic opportunities. The map above was produced by Brad Cole of Geology.com using data licensed from Map Resources. It illustrates the Arctic Ocean and bordering countries. It also shows the Arctic Circle and minimal extent of the summer sea ice cover. Shown below is the International Bathymetric Chart of the Arctic Ocean which was produced by a team of investigators from Canada, Denmark, Germany, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the USA. It can be considered a "physical map of the Artic Ocean" as it shows the bathymetry, ridges and basins that are part of this important area.

Who Owns the Arctic?

Ocean and any resources that might be found beneath those waters? This question has enormous economic significance. The United States Geological Survey estimates that up to 25% of the world's remaining oil and natural gas resource might be held within the seafloor of the Arctic Region. Significant quantities of other mineral resources might also be present. Control of Arctic resources is an extremely valuable prize. These resources become more accessible as global warming melts the sea ice and opens the region to commercial navigation. Freedom of the SeasSince the seventeenth century a "freedom of the seas" doctrine was accepted by most nations. This doctrine limited a nation's rights and jurisdiction to the narrow area of sea along the nation's coastline. The remainder of the oceans were considered as common property that could be used by anyone. This was before anyone had the ability to exploit offshore resources. Then in the mid-1900's concerns that long-distance fishing fleets were depleting coastal fish stocks triggered a desire in some nations to have greater control over their coastal waters. Then oil companies became capable of drilling in deep water and ideas for the seabed mining of manganese nodules, diamonds and tin-bearing sands started to seem possible. Any nation that claimed a greater distance from shore also made claim to valuable seafloor resources. Unilateral ClaimsIn 1945, the United States announced that it assumed jurisdiction of all natural resources out to the edge of its continental shelf. This was the first nation to depart from the freedom of the seas doctrine and other nations quickly followed. Nations began making unilateral claims to seafloor resources, fishing grounds and exclusive navigable zones. A New "Law of the Sea"The United Nations sought to bring order and equity to the diversity of claims being made by nations around the world. In 1982 a United Nations treaty known as "The Law of the Sea" was presented. It addressed navigational rights, territorial waters limits, exclusive economic zones, fishing, pollution, drilling, mining, conservation and many other aspects of maritime activity. With over 150 nations participating it was the first attempt by the international community to establish a formal agreement on how the seas can be used. It also proposes a logical allocation of ocean resources. Under the Law of the Sea, each country receives exclusive economic rights to any natural resource that is present on or beneath the sea floor out to a distance of 200 nautical miles (230 miles / 371 kilometers) beyond their natural shorelines. In the Arctic, this gives Canada, the United States, Russia, Norway and Denmark a legal claim to extensive sea floor areas that might contain valuable resources. (As of November, 2007, the United States had not yet ratified the Law of the Sea treaty. Those who have opposed ratification say that it would limit United States sovereignty)

Okmok Volcano

Okmok Volcano

Okmok Volcano on Unmak Island, Alaska continues to produce explosions and ash plumes through a newly created vent and poses hazards to air travel in the area. Scientists are using a combination of seismic and GPS instruments on the ground and weather and radar satellites in space to track the progress of the eruption. Human visual observations are limited because airborne ash obscures a view of what is happening inside the volcano's 6-mile-diameter caldera and the area is too hazardous to enter. "We are dealing with a scientific challenge because the volcano went from very quiet to a large eruption, putting ash to high altitudes with almost no warning," said John Power, Acting Scientist in Charge of the Alaska Volcano Observatory (AVO). The powerful eruption in the Eastern Aleutian Islands began unexpectedly on July 12, sending up a wet, ash and gas-rich plume that reached an altitude of 50,000 ft above sea level. Heavy ash fall occurred on eastern Umnak Island. A dusting of ash fell in the busy fishing community of Unalaska, 65 miles northeast of Okmok volcano. The ash plume soon spanned several hundred miles across the North Pacific, causing many trans-Pacific flights to be diverted and cancellation of flights to the Dutch Harbor airport. The gas cloud from the eruption is now over Montana. The eruption also destroyed or damaged seismic and deformation sensing equipment at two monitoring stations. A third station has lost its communication pathway due to destruction at the other two. Seismic equipment relays earthquake information and GPS equipment is used in monitoring the deformation of the ground surface in response to magma movement. Seven seismic stations are still operational and seismicity has gradually decreased in intensity since the initial eruption. At a minimum, activity at Okmok is likely to continue for days or weeks. Strong gas-driven explosions can produce rock ballistics or larger volcanic debris that can be hurled beyond the crater rim of the volcanic caldera, potentially landing in surrounding areas several miles away. Fast moving clouds of ash, larger debris, and hot gas can form and flow across the caldera floor, rise up over the caldera wall and continue to flow down Okmok's flanks. Rain mixed with ash could create mudflows and rapid flooding along island drainages. As soon as conditions allow, AVO scientists will travel to the volcano in order to document and understand the sudden onset of explosive activity and repair damage to monitoring equipment. The Okmok caldera formed during catastrophic eruptions 12,000 and 2,000 years ago. There are about a dozen cones within the modern caldera that formed in the last 2000 years, and the most recent eruptive activity occurred in 1945, 1958 and 1997. One violent eruption of Okmok in 1817 produced many feet of ash and "scoria" rock debris on the northeastern caldera rim, as well as ash fall on Unalaska Island and floods that buried an Aleut village at Cape Tanak on the northeast Bering Sea Coast of Umnak Island. USGS is responsible for issuing timely warnings of potential volcanic disasters to affected communities and civil authorities.

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Plowing the Ancient Seas: Iceberg scours found off South Carolina

Plowing the Ancient Seas: Iceberg scours found off South Carolina

FLOW REVERSAL. Currents driving the icebergs that scoured channels in the seafloor off South Carolina at the height of the last ice age ran almost exactly opposite to today's prevailing currents. Channel shown in inset is about 100 meters wide.Hill, et al. Recent sonar surveys off the southeastern coast of the United States have detected dozens of broad furrows on the seafloor—trenches that were carved by icebergs during the last ice age, researchers suggest. The channels, roughly parallel to the coast, are between 10 and 100 meters wide and typically less than 10 m deep, says Jenna C. Hill, an oceanographer at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, S.C. She and her team discovered the enigmatic features while conducting oceanographic surveys about 100 kilometers off Georgetown, S.C., in the summer of 2006. Waters in the area range between 170 and 220 m deep, she notes. Most of the trenches run along straight paths for several kilometers, and one lengthy furrow stretches almost 20 km. Short berms alongside each groove are presumably composed of material that was plowed aside when the channels were carved, says Hill. The seafloor features generally run in a southwest-northeast direction. However, the researchers noticed that some of the channels they discovered during a second survey last summer ended with a semicircular pit at their southwestern terminus. Suddenly, says Hill, the features made sense: Icebergs had plowed the furrows, and pits marked the sites where the ice masses became grounded and later melted. The seafloor culs-de-sac indicate that the currents driving the icebergs flowed to the southwest, opposite to prevailing currents today. At present, warm waters of the northeast-flowing Gulf Stream bathe the region, says Hill. However, she and her colleagues suggest that an offshore shift in the Gulf Stream at the height of the last ice age—when sea levels were more than 100 m lower than they are now—would have allowed glacially fed, iceberg-rich coastal currents to penetrate this far south. Hill and her colleagues presented their findings last month in San Francisco at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union. The team's theory "makes dynamical sense," says John M. Bane, Jr., an oceanographer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Even today, he says, a seafloor feature about 100 km southwest of the berg-scoured region—a broad area called the Charleston Bump—can cause instabilities in the Gulf Stream that deflect the current offshore for a few weeks at a time, causing reversals in the coastal current. At the height of the last ice age, when sea levels were substantially lower, the Gulf Stream may have been more frequently, if not permanently, deflected offshore.

THE LOST OCEAN

THE LAST OCEAN

LOSERS AND WINNERS. More acidic waters could be tough on the tiny coccolithophore Emiliania huxleyi (left), which builds a shell of calcium-carbonate platelets; but comfy for nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria such as Trichodesmium (right).Björn Rost; David Caron/Univ. of Southern California Adding heat Increased CO2 also means the corals will have to contend with temperature increases. Depending on the coral species and the place, 3 to 4 weeks of temperatures a degree or two Celsius above current summer peaks can turn a reef into a spooky white sculpture of itself. This bleaching comes from the breakdown of the partnership between warm-water, soft-bodied corals and their colorful live-in algae, or zooxanthellae. They photosynthesize, and the host corals take a share of the lunch. Sometimes the partners get together again after a bleaching break-up, but prolonged absence of zooxanthellae kills a shallow-water coral. Studies of zooxanthellae during the past decade have revealed unsuspected variety in the alga's capacity to endure heat. Corals primarily colonized with a variant called the D strain withstand heat better than others, according to Ray Berkelmans of the Australian Institute of Marine Science in Townsville. Researchers including Andrew Baker of the University of Miami in Florida are working to develop reef-saving therapies that swap out fragile zooxanthellae strains for heat-savvy ones. The strategy doesn't brighten Hoegh-Guldberg's view of coral futures if carbon emissions keep soaring. Heat waves have bleached corals widely in recent years, but Hoegh-Guldberg hasn't seen the zooxanthellae adapting naturally. "Everyone's had enough time to show magical adaptation of corals," he says. Another hope for adaptation swirls through conversations about coral reefs, but it doesn't cheer Hoegh-Guldberg either. Atmospheric carbon dioxide has spiked and ocean pH has plunged before in Earth's history. So the question arises of whether corals could just do whatever it was they did to survive last time. "That's crap," says Hoegh-Guldberg. Ancient corals would have had more time than today's to get up to speed on hot, lower-pH life, he says. Again he flips open the Science paper and jabs a finger at some data. He and his colleagues used published measurements from air bubbles trapped in ancient ice to calculate rates of change for CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. The concentrations have risen more than 1,000 times faster per century during the industrial revolution than during the previous 420,000 years, the team concludes. Also, Hoegh-Guldberg says he's not convinced that calcifying organisms did manage to laugh off earlier planetary burps of greenhouse gases. During the early Triassic, for example, CO2 concentrations reached levels five times as high as today's. He notes a gap in the fossil record during this time of evidence for both the reef-building corals and the algae that sculpt carbonate. Some lineages of today's corals are ancient enough to have survived hot spells with funky ocean chemistry. Yet those lineages that survived may have done so without calcified skeletons. "They essentially became anemones," he says. That's survival for lineages that can do it, but it's still not a happy ending to Hoegh-Guldberg. Even if all today's corals successfully turned into naked, soft-bodied bits—more magic adaptation perhaps—other reef species would still end up homeless. The intricate crags and crevices of reefs shelter much of the biodiversity of oceans, perhaps a million species. Without complex reef habitats built by corals, it will be a simpler ocean, he says. Floating hubcaps Beings smaller than corals, some of the mere specks of life that drift in the seas as plankton also need calcium carbonate to build. Microscopic coccolithophores, up until now not exactly famous, have become iconic in the study of ocean pH change, thanks to Ulf Riebesell of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Kiel, Germany. The celebrity plankton look like a craft project of hubcaps welded around a giant beach ball. The ornate hubcaps, platelets made of calcium carbonate, enclose a photosynthetic cell. Springtime blooms of coccolithophores such as Emiliania huxleyi can spread over an area the size of Ireland. Light glinting off all the platelets makes milky blue streaks in the sea visible from space. E. huxleyi doesn't follow the corals' recipe for calcifying structures. Yet the coccolithophores also fail to grow normally in low-pH seawater, says Riebesell. In experiments simulating such water, he's seen runt cells with flimsy or even deformed platelets. Growth anomalies are showing up in other marine builder species, such as oysters. And in one of the few studies focusing on larvae, Gretchen Hofmann of the University of California, Santa Barbara, reports difficulties for very young sea urchins. Normal larvae look like alphabet soup "A's." In seawater dosed with extra CO2, though, the larvae grow "shorter and stubbier," she says. Outside the shell Much of the first wave of research on the next ocean has focused on the future of calcification. Not that that's silly. Creatures accounting for 46 percent of the annual U.S. seafood catch form some kind of calcified structure, such as clam shells, says Scott Doney of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. Adding in species that eat the calcifiers, such as pink salmon fattening up at sea on swimming snails called pteropods, would boost the percentage. Still, water chemistry could affect uncalcified aspects of life for marine species, and research is now branching out into these matters. For example, moving around seems to get more difficult for squid in lower-pH water, according to ongoing research by Brad Seibel of the University of Rhode Island in Kingston, and others. The dip in seawater pH disturbs the oxygen transport in squid blood, and squids get sluggish. That odd future ocean means good news for some species, particularly among the noncalcifiers, says David Hutchins of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria grow better in experiments that mimic ocean acidification. "They really love the CO2," he says. The cyanobacteria's cells, such as those in a Trichodesmium species, don't transport CO2 efficiently from the outside world to their internal energy trapping machinery. A richer mix of the gas outside makes the cells more productive. Who flourishes and who fades among the plankton in the new ocean matters to bigger creatures. The marine grazers that feed on plankton prefer some kinds and shun others. If the plankton equivalent of broccoli gives way to a brussels sprouts equivalent, grazer populations change too. Preferences work their way up to top predators, including those on dry land about to pick up a fork. Considering lab and field experiments simulating future oceans, Hutchins speculates that plankton shifts will mean more microbial predators and less fish in the future oceans. "It's not necessarily going to be a world we particularly like," he says. Whether kelps will like it remains to be seen. Kelp biologist Klinger emphasizes that she's just getting started in answering this question. She puts in a plug for the importance of understanding what will happen to kelp. Much like reefs, clusters of fronds offer complex habitats, with hidey-holes for fish and highways for snails. Also one could argue that a future ocean would be a little less interesting without kelp sex.