| Want biodiversity? Look no further than the air around you. It could be teeming with more than 1,800 types of bacteria, according to a first-of-its-kind census of airborne microbes recently conducted by scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy´ Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). Wind-blown dust from the expanding Sahara Desert reaches far out into the Atlantic Ocean, and eventually North America. Scientists hope to learn how this process, which is linked to climate change, alters the microbial population of the air. (Photo NASA) |
