The Preservation and Accumulation of Biogenic Silica and Organic Carbon in a High-Latitude Environment: The Ross Sea

该项目是对罗斯海生物硅和有机碳沉积、海底再生和沉积物积累速率研究的更新，是罗斯海水柱和沉积物中生物硅和有机碳循环协调研究的一部分。南极深海和大陆架环境是全球海洋中二氧化硅积累的主要储存库，并主导着全球二氧化硅的收支。罗斯海是一个特别反常的地区，在那里，现代沉积物中积累了大量的生物成因二氧化硅，而地表生产率通常低于全球平均水平。此外，海洋硅和碳循环之间的通常相似之处似乎并不适用于南极洲周围，这两个循环是分离的，因为现代沉积物中颗粒碳的沉积速度非常低。整个项目是对生产、垂直运输、溶解和沉积过程的综合研究，使用系泊仪器和R/V极地公爵在1989年至1991年期间在罗斯海进行的一系列横断面的直接观测。在这个项目中，沿着罗斯海的特定横断面收集了盒状岩心、活塞式岩心和卡斯滕岩心，其中包括富硅和贫硅沉积物。根据碳-14年表和海底对生物硅和有机碳含量的分析，已经确定了三个累积速率相差几个数量级的地点。在这些地点，生物成因二氧化硅和有机碳的海底保存效率存在很大差异。这一新的努力将涉及对两次航行的数据进行进一步分析，包括海底再生率、碳14沉积物年表和水柱中生物物质的水平运移率，并将这些结果与其他合作调查人员正在完成的生产和垂直运移研究结合起来。

This project is the renewal of a study of the rates of deposition, seabed regeneration, and sediment accumulation of biogenic silica and organic carbon in the Ross Sea, and is part of a coordinated study of the biogenic silica and organic carbon cycling in the water column and the sediments of the Ross Sea. The antarctic deep sea and continental shelf environment is the major repository for silica accumulation in the global ocean, and dominates the global silica budget. The Ross Sea is a particularly anomalous area in which large amounts of biogenic silica are accumulating in modern sediments, while the surface production rates are generally below the global average. Moreover the usual similarity between the oceanic silicon and carbon cycle does not appear to hold around Antarctica, and the two cycles are decoupled in that the rate of particulate carbon deposition in the modern sediment is very low. The overall project is an integrated study of the production, vertical transport, dissolution, and deposition processes, using moored instrumentation and direct observations in a series of transects in the Ross Sea by R/V POLAR DUKE, carried out between 1989 and 1991. In this project, box cores, piston cores, and kasten cores were collected along specific transects in the Ross Sea that included both silica-rich and silica-poor sediments. Based on carbon-14 chronologies and seabed analyses of biogenic silica and organic carbon content, three sites with accumulation rates differing by several orders of magnitude have been identified. At these sites large differences in seabed preservation efficiency exist for both biogenic silica and organic carbon. This renewed effort will be concerned with further analysis of data from the two cruises, including seabed regeneration rates, carbon-14 sediment chronologies, and horizontal transportation rates for biogenic material in the water column, and to integrate these results with production and vertical transport studies being completed by other cooperating investigators.