Organic Carbon Fluxes and Accumulation in Cariaco Basin

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In this project, researchers from the University of South Florida will join with colleagues at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and the University of South Carolina to study the relationship between near surface biogeochemical processes affecting the fluxed of carbon and nitrogen and the downward flux of particulates in the Cariaco Basin, an anoxic embayment on the coast of Venezuela. The Basin is famous for its relatively undisturbed varved sediments which many sedimentologists, geochemists, and paleoceanographers regard as a potentially valuable proxy archive for past oceanographic conditions of the CaribbeanSea and Atlantic Ocean. the USF group will concentrate on collection, modeling, and interpretation of hydrographic and core geochemical data (carbon, nitrogen, phytoplankton composition) of the water column and relating observations to events in the greater Caribbean basin. The SUNY investigators will study the chemical transformations of organic matter as it sinks from surface waters to depth in the Basin. And the South Carolina group will study particle sedimentation through the use of sediment traps and analysis of seabed sediment cores. It is anticipated that these studies will help establish a linkage between the Cariaco sediment archive and regional oceanographic processes over time, hopefully allowing researchers to predict future paleoclimatic/paleoceanographic events by referring to the record left in Cariaco sediments.