The Human Impacts Database

A collection of useful numbers for quantifying the impacts of the human presence on Earth.

This quantity is a single measurement of the quantity at a given point in time (2021).


Value:		≈ 4 - 56 × 10¹² kg see this value in other units This is equivalent to... ≈ 4 - 56 Pg
HuID:		64269
Relevant Year(s):		2021
Summary:		This value is an estimate of global oceanic bacteria biomass, from the top of the ocean to the seafloor. The estimate is based on a probabilistic model, accounting for various surveys and models.
Method:		Global abundance of bacteria was estimated using a statistical model fit to sample data. Biomass is then estimated using average bacterial body mass. The uncertainty reported is derived from two uncertainty measurements. One is the standard error of the mean from 1000 bootstrap samples from the statistical model of global abundance. The second is the standard deviation from the sample data. The geometric mean of these uncertainties to arrive at a 95% confidence interval. The value reported here is the upper and lower bounds of the 95% confidence interval.
Source:		Hatton, I.A., Heneghan, R.F., Bar-On, Y.M., Galbraith, E.D. The global ocean size spectrum from bacteria to whales. Sciences Advances (2021)
Dataset:		Estimated biomass in the ocean by group (summary_biomass_table.csv) global resolution
Original Data License:		CC-BY 4.0
Added By:		rbanks