April 2, 2001

1 min read

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Scientists Document Earth's Biological Record from Space

By Kate Wong

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Image: NASA/SeaWiFS

Researchers have captured in unprecedented detail a record of the plant life covering Earth¿s surface. This global biological record¿based on daily observations of ocean algae and land plants from NASA¿s Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-View Sensor (SeaWiFS) mission¿will enable scientists to study the fate of atmospheric carbon, terrestrial plant productivity and the health of the ocean¿s food web. "With this record we have more biological data today than has been collected by all previous field surveys and ship cruises," says Gene Carl Feldman, SeaWiFS project manager at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. "It would take a ship steaming at six knots over 4,000 years to provide the same coverage as a single global SeaWiFS image." A study based on the first three years of these observations was published on Friday in the journal Science.

Intriguingly, between September 1997 and August 2000, the team found, global plant photosynthesis increased. The initial change seems to have occurred because marine algae was responding to a strong transition between El Ni¿o and La Ni¿a. But why photosynthesis continued to increase after that remains a topic for further investigation. Answers to that question and others may come once additional data has been collected from two Earth Observing System (EOS) spacecraft, which should extend this continuous SeaWiFS record.

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"SeaWiFS not only adds finer detail to our observing capability," says team member James Randerson of the California Institute of Technology, "it supplies essential continuity between data records that is critical to long-term monitoring of changes in the biosphere."

Kate Wong is an award-winning science writer and senior editor for features at Scientific American, where she has focused on evolution, ecology, anthropology, archaeology, paleontology and animal behavior. She is fascinated by human origins, which she has covered for nearly 30 years. Recently she has become obsessed with birds. Her reporting has taken her to caves in France and Croatia that Neandertals once called home to the shores of Kenya’s Lake Turkana in search of the oldest stone tools in the world, as well as to Madagascar on an expedition to unearth ancient mammals and dinosaurs, the icy waters of Antarctica, where humpback whales feast on krill, and a “Big Day” race around the state of Connecticut to find as many bird species as possible in 24 hours. Wong is co-author, with Donald Johanson, of Lucy’s Legacy: The Quest for Human Origins. She holds a bachelor of science degree in biological anthropology and zoology from the University of Michigan. Follow her on Bluesky @katewong.bsky.social

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