Dissolved zinc in the subarctic North Pacific and Bering Sea : its distribution, speciation, and importance to primary producers

• Published in: Global Biogeochemical Cycles
• Main Authors: Jakuba, Rachel W., Saito, Mak A., Moffett, James W., Xu, Yan
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: American Geophysical Union 2012
• Subjects: North; Pacific; Diatoms; Speciation; Zinc; Bering Sea; Subarctic
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/1912/5211

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2012. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Global Biogeochemical Cycles 26 (2012): GB2015, doi:10.1029/2010GB004004. The eastern subarctic North Pacific, an area of high nutrients and low chlorophyll, has been studied with respect to the potential for iron to control primary production. The geochemistry of zinc, a critical micronutrient for diatoms, is less well characterized. Total zinc concentrations and zinc speciation were measured in near-surface waters on transects across the subarctic North Pacific and across the Bering Sea. Total dissolved zinc concentrations in the near-surface ranged from 0.10 nmol L−1 to 1.15 nmol L−1 with lowest concentrations in the eastern portions of both the North Pacific and Bering Sea. Dissolved zinc speciation was dominated by complexation to strong organic ligands whose concentration ranged from 1.1 to 3.6 nmol L−1 with conditional stability constants (K′ZnL/Zn′) ranging from 109.3 to 1011.0. The importance of zinc to primary producers was evaluated by comparison to phytoplankton pigment concentrations and by performing a shipboard incubation. Zinc concentrations were positively correlated with two pigments that are characteristic of diatoms. At one station in the North Pacific, the addition of 0.75 nmol L−1 zinc resulted in a doubling of chlorophyll after 4 days. This research was supported by NSF grant OCE-0136835 and by an EPA STAR Fellowship. 2012-11-12