Dal Corso, J orcid.org/0000-0002-2500-4097, Mills, BJW orcid.org/0000-0002-9141-0931, Chu, D et al. (6 more authors) (2020) Permo–Triassic boundary carbon and mercury cycling linked to terrestrial ecosystem collapse. Nature Communications, 11. 2962. ISSN 2041-1723
Abstract
Records suggest that the Permo–Triassic mass extinction (PTME) involved one of the most severe terrestrial ecosystem collapses of the Phanerozoic. However, it has proved difficult to constrain the extent of the primary productivity loss on land, hindering our understanding of the effects on global biogeochemistry. We build a new biogeochemical model that couples the global Hg and C cycles to evaluate the distinct terrestrial contribution to atmosphere–ocean biogeochemistry separated from coeval volcanic fluxes. We show that the large short-lived Hg spike, and nadirs in δ²⁰²Hg and δ¹³C values at the marine PTME are best explained by a sudden, massive pulse of terrestrial biomass oxidation, while volcanism remains an adequate explanation for the longer-term geochemical changes. Our modelling shows that a massive collapse of terrestrial ecosystems linked to volcanism-driven environmental change triggered significant biogeochemical changes, and cascaded organic matter, nutrients, Hg and other organically-bound species into the marine system.
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Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2020. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Earth Surface Science Institute (ESSI) (Leeds) The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Institute for Applied Geosciences (IAG) (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) NE/P013724/1 NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) NE/S009663/1 NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) Not Known |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 05 May 2020 12:43 |
Last Modified: | 15 Jul 2020 13:41 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Nature Research |
Identification Number: | 10.1038/s41467-020-16725-4 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:160246 |
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