Ancient Maya city discovered in Mexican jungle

Re:Ancient Maya city discovered in Mexican jungle by culi on Thursday June 22, 2023 @03:53PM (#36437829)

Tropical trees are rarely deciduous and jungles like the Amazon often experience significant monsoon seasons which wash away a lot of topsoil. In fact a surprisingly significant part of the Amazon's minerals come from the Saharan dust storms that make it across the ocean

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Re:Ancient Maya city discovered in Mexican jungle by galaxyLogic on Thursday June 22, 2023 @04:08PM (#36438099)

So Sahara is good for something after all

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Re:Ancient Maya city discovered in Mexican jungle by civilitty on Thursday June 22, 2023 @04:15PM (#36438232)

It's a one of the biggest sources of trace micronutrients in the world. The 800 million metric tons of mineral dust a year that it produces feeds a ton of ecosystems:

    Amazon rainforest: phosphorus feeds plants
    Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico: iron feeds plankton
    Atlantic ocean: iron feeds plankton
    Southern Europe: phosphorus feeds plants
    Mediterranean: iron feeds plankton
    Sahel: phosphorus and iron feed plants
    Florida everglades: phosphorus feeds plants
    Andean cloud forest: phosphorus feeds plants

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Re:Ancient Maya city discovered in Mexican jungle by culi on Thursday June 22, 2023 @07:50PM (#36440856)

Worth noting also that roughly half of oxygen in the atmosphere comes from the ocean, the large majority of which comes from plankton. The same type of plankton that bloom from iron.

Scientists have been investigating whether manually spreading iron dust over the ocean can be an effective way to undo the damage that our rapidly rising ocean acidity is doing to our oxygen supply

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