Jakarta –
Forests are not the largest provider of oxygen on Earth. National Geographic mentioning trees and rainforests is only responsible for approximately 28% of the oxygen on earth.
Meanwhile, the largest, which is about 70% of oxygen, comes from the oceans and the rest comes from other sources. Plants that live in the sea release molecular oxygen as a waste product of photosynthesis.
As you know, photosynthesis is the process of making food in plants. In the process plants capture sunlight and use the energy to separate carbon dioxide and water, make sugar and release oxygen.
Then why can marine plants be the largest producer of oxygen on Earth? Here’s the full explanation.
The Most Oxygen Producing Marine Plants on Earth
According to the National Ocean Service (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) website, the United States produces oxygen from marine plants, namely ocean plankton. Both phytoplankton, kelp and algal plankton.
One of its species, Prochlorococcus, even produces up to 20% of oxygen in the entire biosphere. Whereas Prochlorococcus is the smallest photosynthetic organism on Earth. But the plant is able to produce oxygen from all the tropical rain forests on land combined.
Unfortunately, with the development of the times, the amount of oxygen produced in the oceans continues to change. Scientists explain that the amount of plankton can change seasonally.
Changes in nutrient load, water, temperature and various other factors also reduce oxygen from the sea.
One important thing to remember, even though marine plants produce at least 50% of the oxygen on Earth, that doesn’t mean that the oxygen is what humans use to breathe.
All of the oxygen is used by living things that live in the oceans. Like animals on land, marine animals and plants use oxygen to breathe. Not only that, oxygen is also consumed when dead plants and animals decay in the oceans.
Thus, although this oxygen is not directly used by humans, it has another function, namely to maintain the food chain on Earth.
Oxygen Depletion in the Ocean
As previously mentioned, the amount of oxygen in the ocean can change. Launching the page of The Conversation, the open ocean could lose 0.5 to 3.3% of its oxygen stock in the top 1,000 meters from 1970-2010.
As a result, ocean areas with very low or no oxygen are created. This region is called the oxygen minimum zone, which will continue to expand as the planet warms.
Since the decrease in oxygen in the ocean occurred, the oxygen minimum zone has increased by 3-8% since 1970-2010.
This decrease in oxygen in the ocean can mainly be caused by increasing stratification of the oceans or mixing of the sea surface to become warmer.
As a result, deeper and denser layers of the ocean will limit oxygen penetration and consumption of oxygen by sea creatures increases when the ocean warms.
A new study reveals that the oxygen minimum zone in the open ocean has now extended by several million square kilometers in hundreds of coastal locations around the world. This causes oxygen levels to be too low and unable to support most marine life.
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