The benthic geochemical record of late Holocene carbon flux in the northeast Atlantic
| Autor: | Tim Brand, George D. Ritchie, Graham Shimmield |
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| Rok vydání: | 1995 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences. 348:221-227 |
| ISSN: | 1471-2970 0962-8436 |
| DOI: | 10.1098/rstb.1995.0064 |
| Popis: | This study centered around a transect of high-resolution (multi) cores from the 20° W meridian, 60-18° N in the northeast Atlantic. It spans a range of primary productivity zones, and was used to quantify and examine the vertical flux of organic carbon from the euphotic zone (50 m deep) to the sediment—water interface, through the sediment mixed layer, to burial in late Holocene sediment. The disequilibrium between members of the natural uranium decay series ( 226 Ra, 210 Pb and 210 Po) - which track the biogenic flux through scavenging of the particle-reactive nuclides —was employed. Together with experimentally and observationally derived factors, these data were used to convert nuclide flux to organic carbon flux resulting in an estimate of the water column flux of organic carbon. At the sediment-water interface micro-oxygen electrodes were used to quantify the consumption of organic carbon by aerobic respiration. It was noted that the estimated organic carbon flux is strongly dependent on the intensity of bioturbation. The late Holocene organic carbon burial flux was calculated for selected cores from measured organic carbon profiles and sediment accumulation rates over approximately the last 10000 years. This combined approach reveals a strong spatial and temporal signal in the flux of organic carbon through the deep sea in the northeast Atlantic, and provides additional insight into the fate of carbon in this area of the ocean. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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