Respiration, dissolution, and the lysocline

• Main Author: Hales, Burke
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English; unknown
• Published: American Geophysical Union
• Subjects: North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/articles/m613n000t

Here I synthesize the results of several types of measurements of organic carbon respiration and calcium carbonate dissolution rates in pelagic seafloor sediments. Measurements of pore water oxygen demonstrate that most of the respiration takes place very near the sediment-water interface, with a scale depth of a few millimeters. The remainder of the oxic respiration occurs much deeper in the sediments, with a scale depth of several centimeters. All measures of respiration from locations as disparate as the tropical Pacific and Atlantic, and the subtropical North Atlantic agree that pelagic seafloor rates of oxic respiration of organic carbon are relatively independent of depth and location, with the exception of sediments beneath the Pacific eastern equatorial upwelling zone. Calcite dissolution in seafloor sediments requires forcing by respiration-produced CO₂, and rates are consistent with a first-order dependence on pore water undersaturation, solubility as determined by Mucci [1983] at atmospheric pressure, and locally variable mass-specific dissolution rate constants. Respiration-driven calcite dissolution fluxes predicted by this combination of respiration and dissolution rate expressions are significantly lower than many previous estimates. Comparison of dissolution fluxes in the oligotrophic open ocean measured by other researchers with benthic chamber incubation techniques with those predicted by this combination of rate expressions is, within stated uncertainties, in agreement in all but one case, questioning the need for complicated mechanisms such as surface buffering or authigenic precipitation to explain seafloor calcite diagenesis. Applying these kinetics to a simple one-dimensional, steady state model of the bulk calcite content and sediment accumulation rates of the sediment mixed layer yields results consistent with observations of the seafloor lysocline, the region of transition from high calcite to low-calcite sediments, on the Ceara Rise in the western tropical North Atlantic and the ...