Carbon Isotope Biogeochemistry of Lipid Biomakers in Particulate Matter and Surface Sediments of the Sargasso Seaand the Black Sea

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The primary objective of this research is to apply combined biomarker molecular.structural/compound.specific isotopic analyses to study of a suite of particulate samples and surface sediments from the Black Sea and the Sargasso Sea. This project is aimed at demonstrating that compound.specific carbon isotope compositions of particulate organic matter provide substantially more information on the sources and processing of particulate matter in the water column that can be obtained by bulk carbon isotopic measurements and lipid biomarker distributions alone. New insight will be gained into the behavior of particulate organic matter in two markedly different oceanic regimes: an oxygenated oligotrophic water column (the Sargasso Sea) and a marine anoxic basin (the Black Sea). These two sites are chosen because sample suites for lipid biomarker and isotopic analyses are presently on hand. Particles from these two locations will also have very different lipid distributions and should likewise have different isotopic compositions. Thus, this study will not only be determining the biomarker/isotope signatures of particles in a depth profile from some location in the ocean but will also be comparing organism matter processing in the very different environments.