Glacial Silicic Acid Concentrations in the Southern Ocean

• Published in: Science
• Main Authors: Ellwood, Michael J., Wille, Martin, Maher, William
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2010
• Subjects: Southern Ocean
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1194614; https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.1194614

Silicon Leakage Silicon is a major structural component of many marine organisms, whose chemistry is affected by oceanic nutrient distributions. To constrain nutrient changes since the last glacial period, Ellwood et al. (p. 1088 , published online 21 October) measured the isotopic compositions of silicon obtained from the skeletons of deep-sea sponges found in deep cores from the Atlantic and Pacific sectors of the Southern Ocean and compared them to the silicon signatures in the skeletons of modern sponges. The results indicate that nutrient redistribution, related to iron fertilization from dust deposition, boosted the growth of organisms that transferred silicon to mid-latitudes during the last glacial period.