Biogeochemical reactions modulate the chemical composition of the oceans and atmosphere, providing feedbacks that sustain planetary habitability over geological time. Here, we mathematically evaluate a suite of biogeochemical processes to identify combinations of reactions that stabilize atmospheric carbon dioxide by balancing fluxes of chemical species among the ocean, atmosphere, and geosphere. Unlike prior modeling efforts, this approach does not prescribe functional relationships between the rates of biogeochemical processes and environmental conditions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMarine dissolved organic matter (DOM) is a major reservoir that links global carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus. DOM is also important for marine sulfur biogeochemistry as the largest water column reservoir of organic sulfur. Dissolved organic sulfur (DOS) can originate from phytoplankton-derived biomolecules in the surface ocean or from abiotically "sulfurized" organic matter diffusing from sulfidic sediments.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPermafrost soils store approximately twice the amount of carbon currently present in Earth's atmosphere and are acutely impacted by climate change due to the polar amplification of increasing global temperature. Many organic-rich permafrost sediments are located on large river floodplains, where river channel migration periodically erodes and redeposits the upper tens of meters of sediment. Channel migration exerts a first-order control on the geographic distribution of permafrost and floodplain stratigraphy and thus may affect microbial habitats.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOver the past eight hundred thousand years, glacial-interglacial cycles oscillated with a period of one hundred thousand years ('100k world'). Ice core and ocean sediment data have shown that atmospheric carbon dioxide, Antarctic temperature, deep ocean temperature, and global ice volume correlated strongly with each other in the 100k world. Between about 2.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe refractive indices of BaF(2) thin films have been determined experimentally in the 1-11-microm wavelength range. They are found to be significantly lower than the corresponding bulk values and to vary markedly as a function of the deposition rate. A quarterwavelength optical thickness layer of BaF(2) is shown experimentally to be an effective single-layer antireflection coating for NaCl and KCl surfaces at 10.
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