Trace metal and nutrient dynamics across broad biogeochemical gradients in the Indian and Pacific sectors of the Southern Ocean ...

• Main Authors: Janssen, David James, Sieber, Matthias, Ellwood, Michael J., Conway, Tim M., Barrett, Pamela M., Chen, Xiaoyu, De Souza, Gregory F., Hassler, Christel S., Jaccard, Samuel
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: University of Bern 2020
• Subjects: Antarctic; Southern Ocean; The Antarctic; Austral; Balleny Islands; Pacific; Indian; Mertz Glacier; Antarc*
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.7892/boris.141220; https://boris.unibe.ch/141220/

The Southern Ocean is the largest high-nutrient low-chlorophyll environment in the global ocean, and represents an important source of intermediate and deep waters to lower latitudes. Constraining Southern Ocean trace metal biogeochemical cycling is therefore important not just for understanding biological productivity and carbon cycling regionally, but also for understanding trace metal distributions throughout the lower latitude oceans. We present dissolved Fe, Ni, Cu, Zn, Cd, Pb and macronutrient concentrations in the Indian and Pacific sectors of the Southern Ocean from the Antarctic Circumnavigation Expedition (austral summer 2016-17), which included the first opportunities to study trace metal cycling at the Mertz Glacier Polynya and the Balleny Islands, as well as two meridional cross-frontal transects. Dissolved Ni, Cu, Zn, Cd and macronutrient concentrations show similar or greater variability latitudinally within surface waters than vertically through the water column, reflecting the combined ...