Authigenic mineral phases as a driver of the upper-ocean iron cycle.

Iron is important in regulating the ocean carbon cycle. Although several dissolved and particulate species participate in oceanic iron cycling, current understanding emphasizes the importance of complexation by organic ligands in stabilizing oceanic dissolved iron concentrations. However, it is difficult to reconcile this view of ligands as a primary control on dissolved iron cycling with the observed size partitioning of dissolved iron species, inefficient dissolved iron regeneration at depth or the potential importance of authigenic iron phases in particulate iron observational datasets.

Siderophore-based microbial adaptations to iron scarcity across the eastern Pacific Ocean.

Nearly all iron dissolved in the ocean is complexed by strong organic ligands of unknown composition. The effect of ligand composition on microbial iron acquisition is poorly understood, but amendment experiments using model ligands show they can facilitate or impede iron uptake depending on their identity. Here we show that siderophores, organic compounds synthesized by microbes to facilitate iron uptake, are a dynamic component of the marine ligand pool in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean.

Basin-scale transport of hydrothermal dissolved metals across the South Pacific Ocean.

Hydrothermal venting along mid-ocean ridges exerts an important control on the chemical composition of sea water by serving as a major source or sink for a number of trace elements in the ocean. Of these, iron has received considerable attention because of its role as an essential and often limiting nutrient for primary production in regions of the ocean that are of critical importance for the global carbon cycle. It has been thought that most of the dissolved iron discharged by hydrothermal vents is lost from solution close to ridge-axis sources and is thus of limited importance for ocean biogeochemistry.

Iron deficiency increases growth and nitrogen-fixation rates of phosphorus-deficient marine cyanobacteria.

Marine dinitrogen (N2)-fixing cyanobacteria have large impacts on global biogeochemistry as they fix carbon dioxide (CO2) and fertilize oligotrophic ocean waters with new nitrogen. Iron (Fe) and phosphorus (P) are the two most important limiting nutrients for marine biological N2 fixation, and their availabilities vary between major ocean basins and regions. A long-standing question concerns the ability of two globally dominant N2-fixing cyanobacteria, unicellular Crocosphaera and filamentous Trichodesmium, to maintain relatively high N2-fixation rates in these regimes where both Fe and P are typically scarce.

Iron limitation of a springtime bacterial and phytoplankton community in the ross sea: implications for vitamin b(12) nutrition.

The Ross Sea is home to some of the largest phytoplankton blooms in the Southern Ocean. Primary production in this system has previously been shown to be iron limited in the summer and periodically iron and vitamin B(12) colimited. In this study, we examined trace metal limitation of biological activity in the Ross Sea in the austral spring and considered possible implications for vitamin B(12) nutrition.

Anthropogenic osmium in rain and snow reveals global-scale atmospheric contamination.

Osmium is one of the rarer elements in seawater, with typical concentration of approximately 10 x 10(-15) g g(-1) (5.3 x 10(-14) mol kg(-1)). The osmium isotope composition ((187)Os/(188)Os ratio) of deep oceans is 1.

Real-time monitoring of picomolar concentrations of iron(II) in marine waters using automated flow injection-chemiluminescence instrumentation.

A shipboard-deployable, flow-injection (FI) based instrument for monitoring iron(II) in surface marine waters is described. It incorporates a miniature, low-power photon-counting head for measuring the light emitted from the iron(II)-catalyzed chemiluminescence (CL) luminol reaction. System control, signal acquisition, and data processing are performed in a graphical programming environment.