Zhao, M, Mills, BJW orcid.org/0000-0002-9141-0931, Homoky, WB orcid.org/0000-0002-9562-8591 et al. (1 more author) (2023) Oxygenation of the Earth aided by mineral–organic carbon preservation. Nature Geoscience, 16 (3). pp. 262-267. ISSN 1752-0894
Abstract
Photosynthesis produces molecular oxygen, but it is the burial of organic carbon in sediments that has allowed this O₂ to accumulate in Earth’s atmosphere. Yet many direct controls on the preservation and burial of organic carbon have not been explored in detail. For modern Earth, it is known that reactive iron phases are important for organic carbon preservation, suggesting that the availability of particulate iron could be an important factor for the oxygenation of the oceans and atmosphere over Earth history. Here we develop a theoretical model to investigate the effect of mineral–organic preservation on the oxygenation of the Earth, supported by a proxy compilation for terrigenous inputs and the burial of reactive iron phases, and find that changes to the rate of iron input to the global ocean constitute an independent control on atmosphere–ocean and marine sulfate levels. We therefore suggest that increasing continental exposure and denudation may have helped fuel the rise in atmospheric O₂ and other oxidants over Earth history. Finally, we show that inclusion of mineral–organic preservation makes the global marine O₂ reservoir more resilient to changes in nutrient levels by breaking the link between productivity and organic carbon burial. We conclude that mineral–organic preservation is an important missing process in current assessments of Earth’s long-term carbon cycle.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2023. 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) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number Royal Society WRM\FT\170005 EU - European Union 725613 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 24 Feb 2023 15:10 |
Last Modified: | 30 May 2023 22:38 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer Nature |
Identification Number: | 10.1038/s41561-023-01133-2 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:196566 |