Development and Application of Geochemical and Isotopic Tracers to Investigate Environmental Processes

人类活动正在日益改变气候和环境，我们必须提高我们的预测能力，以决定最佳的社会反应，以减轻其负面影响。这些担忧中最重要的是大气二氧化碳的增加，导致全球变暖和海洋酸化，以及可能进一步影响气候和海洋生态系统服务演变的多重反馈。海洋在过去大气二氧化碳和气候的变化中发挥了关键作用，今天它是人为二氧化碳的主要汇。影响大气二氧化碳的主要海洋过程是环流和海洋生态系统产生的有机物质的下沉通量，它们既控制着碳向深海的固存，也控制着与大气接触的地表水的化学。因此，预测未来环境和气候变化的轨迹需要详细记录这些过程因应过去气候变化的演变及其在现代海洋中的量化。实现这种预测能力的一种办法是利用多种地球化学示踪剂的内在综合能力，这些示踪剂要么记录在海洋档案中，提供与过去气候变化有关的海洋过程变化的信息，要么印在水柱上，提供关于现代海洋过程的信息。正在开发一系列广泛的地球化学示踪剂，以便在多代理、相互核对的情况下提供关于多种海洋过程的信息。本提案采用了这一一般性办法，并以过去五年取得的成果为基础。它结合了沉积物和水柱的研究，其中包括：(1)天然放射性同位素(230、234、231pa)，以限制颗粒在海洋中的沉降通量和深水循环；(2)钕同位素，用于追踪海洋水团并提供有关从大陆带入海洋的矿物部分溶解所产生的必需元素在海洋中输入的信息(这一过程最近被称为“边界交换”)；以及(3)铬同位素，提供关于边界交换、碳固存以及现代和过去海洋的氧化还原状态的补充信息。 除了讨论这些广泛的环境问题外，我已经开始并将继续更直接地讨论与环境监测有关的问题。我正在调查使用银和镉同位素确定这些有毒金属在沿海水域的来源和扩散，我的小组开发了一种新的流动溶解模块，以测量矿物的溶解动力学(这也与上述边界交换问题有关)，估计从矿山废物中释放的有毒金属，并评估矿山废物的碳固存潜力。

Human activities are increasingly altering climate and the environment and we must improve our predictive capabilities to decide on optimal societal responses to mitigate their negative impacts. Foremost among these concerns is the rise in atmospheric CO2, resulting in global warming and ocean acidification, and multiple feedbacks that can further affect the evolution of climate and marine ecosystem services. The ocean has played a key role in past changes in atmospheric CO2 and climate, and today it is a major sink for anthropogenic CO2. The main oceanic processes that affect atmospheric CO2 are circulation and the sinking flux of organic matter produced by marine ecosystems, which both control the sequestration of carbon to the deep sea and the chemistry of surface water in contact with the atmosphere. Predicting the trajectory of future environmental and climate changes thus requires a detailed documentation of the evolution of these processes in response to past climate changes and their quantification in the modern ocean. One approach towards achieving such predictive capability is to use the inherent integrative power of multiple geochemical tracers, which are either recorded in marine archives and provide information on changes in oceanic processes in relation to past climate variability, or which are imprinted in the water column and provides information on modern oceanic processes. A wide array of geochemical tracers is being developed to provide information on multiple oceanic processes in a multi-proxy, cross-checking context. The present proposal applies this general approach and builds on results obtained in the past five years. It combines sediment and water column study of (1) natural radioisotopes (230Th, 234Th, 231Pa) to constrain particle sinking flux in the ocean and deep water circulation, (2) neodymium isotopes which trace oceanic water masses and provide information on oceanic input of essential elements from partial dissolution of minerals brought to the sea from continents (a process recently coined as “Boundary Exchange”), and (3) chromium isotopes , which provide complementary information on boundary exchange, carbon sequestration, and the redox state of modern and past oceans. In addition to addressing these broad environmental questions, I have started and will continue to address questions pertaining more directly to environmental monitoring. I am investigating the use silver and cadmium isotopes to establish the source and dispersion of these toxic metals in coastal waters, and my group has developed a novel flow-through dissolution module to measure the kinetics of dissolution of minerals (which is also relevant to the questions of boundary exchange mentioned above), to estimate the release of toxic metals from mine wastes, and to evaluate the potential of mine waste for carbon sequestration.