Carbon Retention in a Colored Ocean (CARIACO): Physical andBiological Processes of Nutrient Import and Carbon Removal in the Cariaco Basin

在这个项目中，来自南佛罗里达大学的研究人员将与纽约州立大学石溪分校和南卡罗来纳大学的同事一起研究影响碳和氮流动的近地表生物地球化学过程与委内瑞拉海岸缺氧海湾卡里亚科盆地颗粒向下流动之间的关系。该盆地以其相对未受干扰的可变沉积物而闻名，许多沉积学家、地球化学家和古海洋学家将其视为加勒比海和大西洋过去海洋状况的潜在有价值的替代档案。USF小组将集中于水柱的水文和核心地球化学数据（碳、氮、浮游植物组成）的收集、建模和解释，以及对大加勒比盆地事件的相关观察。纽约州立大学的研究人员将研究有机物质从地表水下沉到盆地深处时的化学转化。南卡罗来纳小组将通过使用沉积物陷阱和分析海底沉积物岩心来研究颗粒沉积。预计这些研究将有助于建立卡里亚科沉积物档案与区域海洋学过程之间的联系，并有望使研究人员通过参考卡里亚科沉积物中留下的记录来预测未来的古气候/古海洋学事件。

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.