TABLE 2.
Estimated microbial and photosynthetic biomass in volcanic deposits (means ± 1 standard error) and maximum potential areal gross carbon fixationa
| Site | Biomass (μg of biomass gdw−1)
|
Potential carbon fixation (μg of C m−2 day−1) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Microbial | Photosynthetic | ||
| I-A | 4 ± 1 | 0.1 | NDb |
| I-B | 8 ± 0.5 | 0 | 0 |
| I-C | 3 ± 0.2 | 0 | 0 |
| I-D | 11 ± 0.4 | 0.4 ± 0.1 | 4-22 |
| I-E | 42 ± 18 | 14 ± 2 | 135-676 |
| II-A | 26 ± 8 | 10 ± 1 | 44-222 |
| II-B | 18 ± 3 | 31 ± 9 | 124-618 |
| II-C | 129 ± 5 | 23 ± 7 | 123-614 |
a
Biomass values are based on phospholipid phosphate (Fig. 2) and chlorophyll a contents (Fig. 5), with respective conversion factors of 5.3 μg (dry weight) nmol of phospholipid phosphorus−1 (5) and 36 mg of chlorophyll a g of cell C−1 (30), with relative carbon contents for cells of 40%. Carbon fixation is based on measured bulk densities (Table 1) and chlorophyll a fixation factors of 2 to 10 mg fixed mg of chlorophyll a−1 h−1 (17).
b
Not detected.