Project description

ANIMA is a research project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (CTM2015-65720-R), running from 2016 to 2018.
The aim of ANIMA is to quantify and characterize the atmospheric inputs of organic matter and airborne microorganisms and to evaluate their impact in the frame of the NW Mediterranean marine ecosystem. ANIMA combines advances in the characterization of airborne particles, both living and non-living, depositing over the ocean and their interactions with the chemistry and biology in seawater. Special emphasis will be given to organic matter composition and degradation, a subject of high interest in current oceanography as it affects the global carbon cycle. ANIMA will use primary organic matter particles found in aerosols, such as pollen and soot, and study their degradation and the signature of leached dissolved substances in relation to signatures observed at sea. Airborne microorganisms will be mapped for different locations and away from land into the open sea. Microorganisms, including fungi, will be identified using different techniques and scanned for their organic matter degradation capacity in marine systems. The overriding hypothesis of ANIMA is that the larger proportion of organic matter in anthropogenic aerosols preferentially stimulates the heterotrophic bacteria in the water and changes microbial community composition. But we also expect a portion of airborne organic matter to be rather refractory, thus favoring carbon accumulation in surface waters. In future scenarios of the Mediterranean, aerosol deposition should have an even larger impact on marine ecosystems as aerosol loads, both natural and anthropogenic, are increasing while the mixed layer depth is shallowing. Thus, ANIMA will help understand current and future ocean responses to aerosol deposition.