Early disagenesis of deep-water coral mounds, Atlantic Ocean

环大西洋北部地区的现代深水珊瑚碳酸盐丘以其对高度生物多样性的支持、对过去气候和海洋变化的记录以及对海洋“酸化”等当前环境扰动的脆弱性而闻名。自上世纪90年代初重新发现以来，这些深水珊瑚丘一直是人们关注的焦点，代表着地质学家所知和所描述的“富含泥质的碳酸盐丘陵”的现代类比。富含泥质的碳酸盐丘是重要的地质结构(后生动物的演化、碳氢化合物储集岩)，然而，对它们的形成没有一个直接的解释。事实上，它们的化石内容不允许人们认识到简单的骨骼生长框架，因为它存在于现代和古代的礁石中。许多地质证据表明，在后生动物组织和相关溶解有机物质的退化和循环过程中，这些土丘确实是通过碳酸盐矿物的自生沉淀而“从内”生长的。该项目利用了针对摩洛哥近海现代深水珊瑚礁的钻探活动。目前，这些土丘正处于亚氧降解阶段，因此将允许探索微生物和有机化学对土丘形成的影响。这项研究是作为加拿大应邀向欧洲科学基金会EUROCORES-EuroDIVERSITY和-EuroDEEP计划的两个跨学科合作研究项目--微系统和CHEMECO项目捐款而进行的。

Modern, deep-water coral carbonate mounds of the northern, circum-Atlantic region are known for their support of a high biodiversity, their record of past climatic and oceanographic changes, and their vulnerability to present environmental perturbation such as ocean "acidification". Since their rediscovery in the early 90s of the last century, these deep-water coral mounds are in perennial focus to represent a modern analogue of what geologists know and describe as "mud-rich carbonate mounds". Mud-rich carbonate mounds are important geological structures (evolution of the metazoa, hydrocarbon reservoir rocks) that, however, defy a straightforward explanation of their formation. Indeed, their content of fossils does not allow the recognition of a simple skeletal growth framework as it exits in modern and ancient reef rocks. A number of geological evidences point to the fact that these mounds grew literally "from the inside" via the authigenic precipitation of carbonate minerals during the degradation and cycling of metazoan tissue and related dissolved organic matter. This project takes advantage of a drilling campaign addressed to modern, deep-water coral mounds off Morocco. At present, these mounds are in a stage of suboxic degradation and therefore will allow the exploration of the microbial and organochemical impact on mound formation "caught in the act". This research is performed as an invited Canadian contribution to the MiCROSYSTEMS and CHEMECO projects, two interdisciplinary collaborative research projects of the EUROCORES-EuroDIVERSITY and -EuroDEEP program of the European Science Foundation.