Faust, JC orcid.org/0000-0001-8177-7097, Tessin, A, Fisher, BJ orcid.org/0000-0001-7113-2818 et al. (5 more authors) (2021) Millennial scale persistence of organic carbon bound to iron in Arctic marine sediments. Nature Communications, 12. 275. ISSN 2041-1723
Abstract
Burial of organic material in marine sediments represents a dominant natural mechanism of long-term carbon sequestration globally, but critical aspects of this carbon sink remain unresolved. Investigation of surface sediments led to the proposition that on average 10-20% of sedimentary organic carbon is stabilised and physically protected against microbial degradation through binding to reactive metal (e.g. iron and manganese) oxides. Here we examine the long-term efficiency of this rusty carbon sink by analysing the chemical composition of sediments and pore waters from four locations in the Barents Sea. Our findings show that the carbon-iron coupling persists below the uppermost, oxygenated sediment layer over thousands of years. We further propose that authigenic coprecipitation is not the dominant factor of the carbon-iron bounding in these Arctic shelf sediments and that a substantial fraction of the organic carbon is already bound to reactive iron prior deposition on the seafloor.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2021. 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, visithttp://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) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) NE/P006493/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 07 Dec 2020 09:52 |
Last Modified: | 25 Jun 2023 22:31 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer Nature |
Identification Number: | 10.1038/s41467-020-20550-0 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:168725 |