Towards a novel method for iron species determination in Antarctic sea ice

• Main Authors: Budasheva, Hanna, Bratkič, Arne, Korte, Dorota, Franko, Mladen
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: English
• Published: 2021
• Subjects: beam deflection spectrometry; diffusive gradients; thin films; iron species; photothermal techniques; Antarctic sea ice; info:eu-repo/classification/udc/54; Antarctic; Davis Station; Davis-Station; Southern Ocean; The Antarctic; Antarc*; Sea ice
• Online Access: http://repozitorij.ung.si/IzpisGradiva.php?id=7011; https://plus.si.cobiss.net/opac7/bib/87060483?lang=sl

Sea-ice borne iron has been found to be an important factor controlling Southern Ocean phytoplankton growth [1]. Knowing the amount and chemical speciation of its labile fraction in sea ice would advance our understanding of the involved processes. Unfortunately, it is rather difficult to perform their measurement because of limited access to the Antarctic. Thus there is a strong need for the development of a quick, simple and reliable technique for determination of iron and its speciation in sea-ice that ensures also low enough limits of detection. Recently, diffusive gradients in thin films (DGT) have been widely used as passive samplers for collecting time-averaged data on the concentrations of transition metals in different media [2]. DGTs are further coupled to an analytical technique that in case of detecting metals in passive sampler films primarily requires their extraction [3], which may potentially lead to changes of the metal specification. In the present study, the beam deflection spectrometry (BDS) is coupled to DGT and used to determine the average concentration of iron in the sea ice samples collected at the Davis Station in the Antarctic. Such a combined technique has been already successfully applied for detecting labile iron species in freshwater sediments [4]. The obtained BDS data were validated by thermal lens spectrometry (TLS) and UV-Vis spectrophotometry (SPEC). The distribution of iron species over a given ice surface area using the DGT-BDS technique revealed total iron concentrations in the range of 0.6 – 5.3 μgL-1, whereas the Fe2+ content was found to be in the range of 0.1 – 1.5 μgL-1. The range taking into account all of the measurement points (5×4), the precision of a single measured point is 0.2 μgL-1. The calculated 24 h-average concentration of total Fe labile species in the ice by using BDS is 2.3 ± 0.5 μgL-1, which coincides with data obtained by SPEC (2.5 ± 0.4 μgL-1) and TLS (2.39 ± 0.02 μgL-1). Our results indicate that it is possible to develop a robust, ...