A novel marine mesocosm facility to study global warming, water quality, and ocean acidification.

ABSTRACT: We describe a completely randomizable flow-through outdoor mesocosm for climate change and ecotoxicology studies that was built with inexpensive materials. The 16 raceway tanks allow up to 6× water renewal per hour, avoiding changes in natural abiotic seawater conditions. We use an open-source hardware board (Arduino) that was adapted to control heaters and an innovative CO 2 injection system. This system reduced seawater pH up to -0.9 units and increased temperature up to +6°C in three treatments and a control. Treatments can be continuously compared with the control and vary according to diel fluctuations, thus following the diel range observed in the sea. The mesocosm facility also includes an integrated secondary system of 48 aquaria for ecotoxicology studies. We validated the reproduc

SUBMITTER: Duarte G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4670062 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature