Brown algae take large amounts of carbon dioxide from the air and release parts of the carbon into the environment. Carbon is removed from the atmosphere for a long time because mucus is hard to break down for other ocean dwellers.
The amount of carbon dioxide that can be removed from the air by fucoidan is estimated to be almost the same amount of Germany's annual emissions.
Plants that absorb carbon dioxide from the air are called brown algae. They play an important role in the atmosphere and climate because they out compete forests on land. The brown algae can remove large amounts of carbon dioxide from the global cycle in the long term and thus can counteract global warming according to a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
Brown algae is not a popular dish.
The carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is taken up by thealgae. They excrete up to a third of the carbon they absorb into the water. Depending on the structure of the excretions, they can either be used by other organisms or sink into the ocean.
The excretions of brown algae are very complex and difficult to measure. We have developed a way to analyze them in more detail.
The researchers looked at a lot of substances. The fucoidan was exciting. Half of the excretions of the brown algae species we studied were made up of fucoidan.
Fucoidan is hard to break. It is difficult for other organisms to use the fucoidan. No one likes it. The carbon from the fucoidan doesn't come back to the atmosphere quickly. For hundreds to thousands of years, the brown algae can help remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Germany has a lot of carbon dioxide emissions.
The brownalga are productive. One billion tons of carbon is absorbed annually from the air. The results of the present study show that brown algae can sequester up to 0.15 gigatons of carbon, equivalent to 0.55 gigatons of carbon dioxide, over the course of a year. The Federal Environment Agency estimates Germany's annual greenhouse gas emissions to be 0.74 gigatons of carbon dioxide.
The fucoidan does not have any nitrogen. The growth of the brownalga is unaffected by the carbon losses.
There are more species and places.
Buck-Wiese and his colleagues from the MARUM Bremen Bridge Group Marine Glycobiology, which is based at both the Max Planck Institute and MARUM– Center for Marine and Environmental Sciences at the University of Bremen, conducted their experiments at the Tvrminne Zoological.
We want to look into other brown algae species. The potential of brown algae for climate protection needs to be further explored.
The Fucoid brownalga inject fucoidan carbon into the ocean. The DOI is 10.1073/pnas.2
Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
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