PHOTOSYNTHESIS AND THE CARBON CYCLE

HA&S 220a

An important part of the story we have been developing is the role of biology in
the world’s energy system. We have seen how burning (or oxidizing) different substances
results in a release of energy we can harness to do work. Biological organisms burn fuel
sources inside their cells in order to release energy to do the work of running the
biochemical reactions that keep them alive. (This is called respiration.) The basic
oxidation reaction is :

C6H12O6 + 6O2 -> 6CO2 + 6H2O

Yields 2755 kJ/mole of glucose

The reverse of this reaction – combing carbon dioxide and water to make sugar –
is known as photosynthesis. Photosynthesis is the process responsible for storing all the
energy we extract from fossil fuels, crops, and all of our food. We will also see that it is
part of a globally important cycle affected by our consumption of fossil fuels.

I. Photosynthesis How is photosynthesis able to run the reaction above in the reverse
direction? Somehow it must come up with 2755 kJ of energy to make each mole of
glucose. Where does that energy come from? The short answer: photons of sunlight. The
long answer: When the pigment chlorophyll inside the chloroplasts of a photosynthetic
organism (phytoplankton, trees, other plants) absorbs sunlight, it becomes energetically
‘excited’ and grabs the hydrogen atoms away from a water molecule, leaving the oxygen
atoms to escape as O2 gas. This is called ‘splitting water.’
The hydrogen atoms are then split into their component protons and electrons.
The electrons are used to reduce carbon dioxide, in a series of many steps requiring more
absorption of sunlight by chlorophyll, to glucose. When carbon dioxide receives those
electrons, the extra negative charge attracts protons from elsewhere, creating hydrogen
atoms attached to the carbon atom. This process is called reduction. When those reduced
carbon dioxide molecules are combined together in a larger molecule, the result is
glucose. This ‘combing together’ of small molecules requires an input of energy, which is
provided by the ATP molecules made by the protons diffusing through the membrane of
the chloroplast. The ATP molecule is simply a molecule that biology uses to store energy
for later use. In this case, the mechanical energy created by the protons diffusing across
the membrane turns a sort of molecular turbine that smashes together its precursors,
forming ATP.

II. The carbon cycle Where does photosynthesis occur? It occurs in the phytoplankton
of the ocean and the trees and other plants on land. On land, the carbon dioxide consumed
by plants to make organic matter (known as ‘fixing carbon’) is stored for fairly long
periods of time until the plant is harvested, eaten, or otherwise dead. Trees, for example,
can live for hundreds of years and store lots of fixed carbon for long periods of time. In
the ocean, in contrast, carbon is fixed by fast-growing, quickly eaten phytoplankton. The
word ‘phytoplankton’ means any organism that undergoes photosynthesis in the water
and includes many species of algae and bacteria.
 Because the carbon fixed by phytoplankton is ‘turned over’ so quickly (a term
meaning the phytoplankton get eaten often), the fixed carbon is released into the
environment creating an intricate web of carbon transfer in the ocean. The phytoplankton
are grazed (eaten) by various species of bacteria and zooplankton (insects and
crustaceans). These grazers are in turn eaten by larger animals, which are eaten by larger
animals, which are eaten by big fish, which are eaten by bigger fish, which are eaten by
humans. The key concept here is that all of these organisms are continuously pooping
throughout their lives before they get eaten. If the poop is heavy enough, it sinks, and the
technical term for this process is known as the “biological carbon pump.” The feces of
animals eating phytoplankton transports the carbon contained in the phytoplankton down
to the seafloor.
As the fecal pellets (the technical term for poop) fall, the carbon in the poop is
consumed by bacteria with oxygen – that is, the bacteria oxidize the carbon in poop with
O2 gas dissolved in the ocean. Almost the entire ocean contains abundant quantities of
dissolved oxygen, but in some places the local concentration of oxygen in small
microenvironments (for example, around a fecal pellet) can become quite low. Also,
when the fecal pellet falls all the way down to the sediment on the seafloor, oxygen can
become depleted quite quickly. When this happens, the bacteria oxidize the carbon with
other oxidizers than oxygen like nitrate, sulfate, and hydrogen, which become abundant
when oxygen is absent. The byproducts of these reactions include ammonia, sulfide, and
methane.
That concludes that series of events, but now we need to return to the surface
where we will talk about a special kind of phyotplankton known as the coccolithophores.
They get this odd name due to their armor of calcium carbonate surrounding their cells
called coccoliths. They make their armor by precipitating carbonate (CO32-) dissolved in
the ocean onto their cell walls. When the coccolithophores are eaten, the coccoliths
remain intact in the resulting fecal pellets and sink to the seafloor.
Thus, this is another example of phytoplankton taking carbon from the surface of
the ocean and transporting it to the seafloor through fecal pellets. Think about what this
means for the global distribution of carbon. When animals on land breathe out carbon
dioxide or burn oil and produce carbon dioxide, trees on land and phytoplankton in the
ocean take that carbon dioxide, convert it into biological molecules, which sink to the
seafloor. Now you see why scientists took to calling this the biological carbon pump.
Phytoplankton pump our carbon waste to the seafloor.
This system has resulted in a relatively stable concentration of carbon dioxide in
the atmosphere since the last ice age. The question for today, though, is: Can the
phytoplankton carbon pump keep up with modern outputs of carbon dioxide from the
burning of fossil fuels? The short answer is an obvious “no” since the concentration of
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been steadily increasing since the Industrial
Revolution and will continue to increase for some time even if we immediately cease all
fossil fuel burning. Today we will ask what this means for the marine ecosystem.

Ocean Acidification
Carbon dioxide is not just a greenhouse gas. It is also an acid. An increase in
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere leads to an increase in carbon dioxide in the ocean. This
increase in carbon dioxide lowers the pH of the surface ocean. Coccolithophores,
foraminifera (predators), and coral all make their shells out of calcium carbonate.
Carbonate (CO32-) is a base. That means that as the ocean becomes more acidic, there is
less carbonate. This makes it difficult for the coccolithophores foraminifera and coral to
make their carbonate body armor. Without coccolithophores and foraminifera not as
much carbon will be pumped to the seafloor. So not only can the coccolithophores and
other phytoplankton not keep up with our carbon waste, our carbon waste is actually
making the carbon pump worse because it poisons some of the main carbon pumpers.
Coccolithophores foraminifera and coral will die way before the pH is so low that
their shells dissolve. These creatures are alive and they grow, die and make babies.
Therefore, they have to be able to make new shells, and repair their shells, not just use
already existing shells. For these creatures to be able to make new shells, there needs to
be an excess of carbonate in the ocean. How much of an excess? Lots of scientists are
trying to figure that out. But basically, the smaller the excess of carbonate, the more
energy the organism has to use to make its shell and at some point they no longer will be
able to make a shell at all.

Iron Fertilization
As for the rest of the phytoplankton, you might expect that increased carbon
dioxide levels would make them very happy – we are, after all, giving them more food.
The problem is that the phytoplankton do not seem to be limited by their carbon dioxide
food – they are limited by other nutrients they need in the ocean such as nitrate,
phosphate and iron. So giving them more carbon dioxide does not matter unless they get
more nitrate, phosphate and iron too. If we go out to the ocean and dump a bunch of
fertilizer overboard (fertilizer is nitrate and phosphate) the result is an algal bloom that
may, indeed, export more carbon to the seafloor. [People do this to lakes and ponds all
the time. More organic matter is exported to the bottom of the lake, but this unbalanced
state of the ecosystem has numerous negative side effects such as fostering disease (like
cholera). When you have lots of organic matter, like lots of algae, you also have lots of
bacteria eating the organic matter, including pathogens. Microbes eating the organic
matter may also use up the oxygen at the bottom of the lake, killing the fish.] Also, an
oceanic supply of fertilizer would be very expensive.
Some parts of the ocean have enough nitrate and phosphate, but do not have
enough iron. Iron often comes to the ocean from land, from dust storms in the Sahara
Desert for example. Some people want to dump iron in these parts of the ocean as a way
to decrease atmospheric CO2. These experiments have actually been done in the ocean –
scientists throw large quantities of iron overboard and measure how the phytoplankton
are affected.
The results have been that algal blooms are created by iron fertilization
experiments, but these blooms do not greatly change the biological carbon pump. Indeed,
what happens is very much like what would happen if you dumped fertilizer overboard:
the phytoplankton become more numerous, but so do the bacteria and zooplankton. The
predators feed off the phytoplankton and oxidize much of the organic matter created by
the phytoplankton back to carbon dioxide. So all of the increased productivity caused by
the iron does not result in much carbon being pumped to the seafloor. The other problem
with this idea is that the ocean is made of moving water. Water, with nitrate and
phosphate but no iron, will (may) eventually move to a place where iron dust is blown
from the land. Usually in this case, phytoplankton will bloom, but if the nitrate and
phosphate have already been consumed, they will not. Thus, iron fertilization would be
just moving the spot where the phytoplankton bloom took place.

Pumping CO2 to the Seafloor

One idea people have proposed to cope with our carbon dioxide waste is to
directly pump the liquid CO2 to the seafloor using large man-made pipes. (The
phytoplankton won’t do it, so we’ll do it ourselves!) The hypothesis is that the carbon
dioxide would be converted into bicarbonate, and the ocean is capable of storing lots and
lots of bicarbonate, easily enough to store all of our carbon dioxide waste. Big
corporations and policy-makers are taking this idea very seriously. It is true that the
ocean can store a lot of bicarbonate, and the carbon pumped into the seafloor probably
won’t affect coccolithophores or coral at the surface for couple hundred years. After a
couple hundred years, however, pH of the surface ocean would be seriously affected by
this major change in ocean chemistry. In the short term, though, carbon dioxide levels in
the atmosphere would decrease, or, more likely, increase at a slower rate, helping to
moderate climate change. There are three problems with this idea: 1) We would just have
to hope that our future generations will figure out how to save the surface oceans from
disaster. 2) Liquid CO2 is dense and travels along the bottom of the seafloor until it
dissolves. The pH of the deep ocean would change drastically. How will the creatures
down there respond? 3) It takes energy to turn CO2 into a liquid, and to pump it to the
bottom of the ocean. Using energy makes more CO2.

Carbon Sequestration on Land

There are two basic ideas for sequestering CO2 on land. One is to put the CO2
back where the oil came from. The other is to put the CO2 in salt water aquifers
thousands of feet below the earth’s surface. There are two concerns that scientists are
now exploring. Will the CO2 escape? Will the CO2 cause problems? Remember CO2 is
an acid. I have the impression that people are leaning toward using the salt water
aquifers. You should visit the Department of Energy website to learn about these further.

Geologic Time Scale

A final point on this topic is that on geological time scales, all the oil and coal we
have burned would have become CO2 eventually. The time it takes for this to happen is
the time required for the oil and coal to erode from continents onto the ocean floor and
then for the oceanic crustal plates to subduct under the continents, melt everything
contained on the seafloor, and expel the waste through volcanoes on the surface. In this
way, the entire global carbon cycle is completed, and everything balances out. It takes
several hundred million years.