Gamma-Ray Bursts and Marine Primary Producers

Details Gamma-Ray Bursts and Marine Primary Producers Gamma-Ray Bursts and Marine Primary Producers

Jan 2011

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011aas...21734901t&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #217, #349.01; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 43, 2011

Mathematics

Logic

Scientific paper

Gamma-ray bursts (GRB) have been recognized as a potential threat to life on Earth, primarily through long-term depletion of stratospheric ozone, leading to greatly increased solar ultraviolet (UV) irradiance at the surface. It has been suggested that a GRB may have initiated the late Ordovician mass extinction - one of the "big five" known extinctions. Past efforts by our group to estimate the biological impact of a GRB have used a simplified Beer-Lambert calculation with an ozone column density to estimate surface UV irradiance. Biological damage was then computed by combining the irradiance with a biological weighting function (BWF) for DNA damage.
We are currently engaged in a project to greatly increase the accuracy of these estimates, with a focus on the impact on primary producers in the Earth's oceans. These organisms make up the base of the marine food web and produce half the world's oxygen. Our approach features full radiative transfer modeling to determine surface UV irradiance, combined with newly measured biological weighting functions for some of the most abundant marine primary producers. Here, we report on preliminary results of this study, including computed spectral irradiance at the surface and in ocean water under conditions following a GRB, along with the impact on primary productivity as computed using preliminary BWF results.
This work is supported by NASA's Astrobiology: Exobiology and Evolutionary Biology program, grant #NNX09AM85G.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

Gamma-Ray Bursts and Marine Primary Producers does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Gamma-Ray Bursts and Marine Primary Producers, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Gamma-Ray Bursts and Marine Primary Producers will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1403238