Record Details

Perspectives on the terrestrial organic matter transport and burial along the land-deep sea continuum: Caveats in our understanding of biogeochemical processes and future needs

DRS at CSIR-National Institute of Oceanography

View Archive Info
 
 
Field Value
 
Title Perspectives on the terrestrial organic matter transport and burial along the land-deep sea continuum: Caveats in our understanding of biogeochemical processes and future needs
 
Creator Kandasamy, S.
Nath, B.N.
 
Subject Chemistry and biogeochemistry
Chemistry and biogeochemistry
Chemistry and biogeochemistry
Geology and geophysics
 
Description The natural carbon cycle is immensely intricate to fully understand its sources, fluxes and the processes that are responsible for their cycling in different reservoirs and their balances on a global scale. Anthropogenic perturbations add another dimension to such a complex cycle. Therefore, it is necessary to update the global carbon cycle by combining both natural and anthropogenic sources, fluxes and sinks along the land-sea continuum to assess whether these terms are currently in balance or not. Here, we review the export and burial rates of terrestrial organic carbon in the oceans to understand the issue of “missing terrigenous carbon” by comparing data- and model-based estimates of terrestrial carbon fluxes. Our review reveals large disparities between field data and model output in terms of dissolved and particulate organic carbon/matter (OC/OM) fluxes and their ratios, especially for Oceania and Arctic rivers, suggesting the need of additional investigations in these regions to refine terrestrial OC export budget. Based on our budgeting of global sources and sinks of OC with updated estimates of marine productivity and terrestrial OM burial rate, we find that the marginal sediments are key burial sites of terrestrial OM (TOM), which is consistent with earlier views of Berner (1982) and Hedges and Keil (1995). While about 60–80% of TOM is remineralized in the margins, the estimated budget further reveals the ocean derived OM is efficiently remineralized than that of terrestrial OM, emphasizing the need of further improvements of carbon burial estimation in the marine realm. When we look back in the past, higher terrestrial OC burial (by ~50%) in the deep ocean during the glacials than during the interglacials suggests the subdued role of continental margins and an efficient transfer and preservation of OM from the shelf to deep sea in glacials. Based on the review of terrestrial and marine OM burial, we suggest some critical regions/ways that need to be investigated/addressed further, identification of new biogeochemical proxies and their grouping to better constrain the global carbon cycle along the land-deep sea continuum in future
 
Date 2017-02-14T11:59:17Z
2017-02-14T11:59:17Z
2016
 
Type Journal Article
 
Identifier Frontiers in Marine Science, vol.3; 2016; no.259 doi.: 10.3389/fmars.2016.00259
http://drs.nio.org/drs/handle/2264/5067
 
Language en
 
Rights Copyright © 2016 Kandasamy and Nagender Nath. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
 
Publisher Frontiers Media