Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Biogeochemistry
Carbon fractions in the world’s dead wood
Published: 2020-06-05
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Alarming increases in tree mortality due to environmental change suggest that contributions of dead wood to global carbon (C) cycles are rapidly increasing 1-3, with dead wood C flux estimates already approximating total annual anthropogenic C emissions 4. Quantifying C in dead wood critically depends on accurate estimates of dead wood C fractions (CFs) to convert dead woody biomass into C. Most [...]
Fate of intertidal microphytobenthos nitrogen under enhanced nutrient availability: Evidence for reduced nitrogen retention revealed through 15N-labeling
Published: 2020-05-25
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Sediment microbial communities are an important sink for both organic and inorganic nitrogen (N), with microphytobenthos (MPB) biomass having the largest contribution to short-term N-assimilation and retention. Coastal waters are increasingly subject to anthropogenic nutrient enrichment, but the effect of this nutrient enrichment on microbial assimilation, processing, and fate of MPB-derived N [...]
Shining light on priming in euphotic sediments: Nutrient enrichment stimulates export of stored organic matter
Published: 2020-05-25
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Life Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Estuarine sediments are important sites for the interception, processing and retention of organic matter, prior to its export to the coastal oceans. Stimulated microbial co-metabolism (priming) potentially increases export of refractory organic matter through increased production of hydrolytic enzymes. By using the microphytobenthos community to directly introduce a pulse of labile carbon into [...]
Preservation of Organic Carbon in Dolomitized Cambrian Stromatolites and Implications for Microbial Biosignatures in Diagenetically Replaced Carbonate Rock
Published: 2020-05-25
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Geology, Planetary Sciences
Stromatolites have been a major focus in the search for ancient microbial life, however, the organic carbon biosignatures of dolomitized stromatolites have not yet been fully characterized or correlated with their dolomitizing conditions. Although dolomitization rarely preserves microbial morphology, the presence of organic carbon can provide valuable information for characterization of fossils’ [...]
Human Health Benefits of the Minamata Convention on Mercury
Published: 2020-05-17
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Biogeochemistry, Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The Minamata Convention is a legally-binding international treaty aimed at reducing the anthropogenic release of mercury, a potent neurotoxin. However, its human health benefit has not been quantified on a global scale. Here we evaluate the Convention’s benefit by a coupled climate-atmosphere-land-ocean-ecosystem model and a human mercury exposure component that considers all food categories. We [...]
International disparities in open access practices of the Earth Sciences community
Published: 2020-03-30
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Cosmochemistry, Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Geomorphology, Geophysics and Seismology, Glaciology, Hydrology, Library and Information Science, Mineral Physics, Other Earth Sciences, Paleobiology, Paleontology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Soil Science, Speleology, Stratigraphy, Tectonics and Structure, Volcanology
Short communication on international disparities in open access practices of the Earth Sciences community
On the potential of preprints in geochemistry: the good, the bad and the ugly
Published: 2020-03-21
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Cosmochemistry, Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Library and Information Science, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Short communication on the use of preprint in geochemistry
Fate of organic compounds during transformation of ferrihydrite in iron formations
Published: 2020-01-30
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Chemistry, Earth Sciences, Physical Chemistry, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The absence of organic compounds from Precambrian iron formations (IF) challenges the hypothesis of the biogenic origin of IF. Here we address the fate of adsorbed organic compounds during transformation from ferrihydrite to hematite. We determined the binding energy between hematite and common molecular terminations found in extracellular polymeric substances and biofilms: carboxylic, hydroxyl [...]
Magnetite biomineralization in ferruginous waters and early Earth evolution
Published: 2020-01-09
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Burial of large quantities of magnetite (Fe(II)Fe(III)2O4) in iron formations (IFs) likely contributed to the protracted oxidation of Earth’s surface during the Precambrian Eons. Magnetite can form through a diversity of biological and abiotic pathways and its preservation in IFs may thus be variably interpreted as the result of some combination of these processes. Such interpretations thus give [...]
Ge and Si isotope behavior during intense tropical weathering and ecosystem cycling
Published: 2020-01-03
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Chemical weathering of volcanic rocks in warm and humid climates contributes disproportionately to global solute fluxes. Geochemical signatures of solutes and solids formed during this process can help quantify and reconstruct volcanic weathering intensity in the past. Here, we measured silicon (Si) and germanium (Ge) isotope ratios of the soils, clays, and fluids from a tropical lowland [...]
Open Access publishing practice in Geochemistry: current state and look to the future
Published: 2019-12-08
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Open Access (OA) describes the free, unrestricted access to and re-use of research articles. Recently, a new wave of interest, debate, and practice surrounding OA publishing has emerged. In this paper, we provide a simple overview of the trends in OA practice in the broad field of geochemistry. Characteristics of the approach such as whether or not an article processing charge (APC) exists, what [...]
No support for carbon storage of >1000 GtC in northern peatlands
Published: 2019-12-04
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Northern peatlands store large amounts of carbon (C) and have played an important role in the global carbon cycle since the Last Glacial Maximum. Most northern peatlands have established since the end of the deglaciation and accumulated C over the Holocene, leading to a total present-day stock of 500 ± 100 GtC. This is a consolidated estimate, emerging from a diversity of methods. Recently, [...]
Simultaneous measurement of aqueous redox sensitive elements and their species across soil-water interface
Published: 2019-11-20
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Soil-water interface (SWI) hosts versatile elements speciation and controls elements cycling in flooded lands. However, the study on the element’s interaction along SWI is limited by the sampling and analytical methods available. Here with an optimized ICP-MS method and an updated porewater sampler, we succeeded in simultaneously mapping the elements of environmental concerns in every 1.7 mm [...]
Macrophyte cover type and groundwater as the key drivers of the extremely high organic carbon concentration of soda pans
Published: 2019-11-20
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
1. Endorheic soda pans are among the aquatic systems that have the highest dissolved organic carbon (DOC) content on the planet with concentrations reaching values close to 1 g L−1. Considering the importance of inland waters in the global carbon cycle, the understanding of the drivers of such outstanding aquatic organic carbon pools is eminent. The soda pans of the Carpathian Basin present a [...]
Equifinality, Sloppiness, and emergent model structures of mechanistic soil biogeochemical models
Published: 2019-11-05
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Soil Science
Biogeochemical models increasingly consider the microbial control of car- bon cycling in soil. The major current challenge is to validate mechanistic descriptions of microbial processes and predicted system responses against experimental observations. We analyzed soil biochemical models of different complexity regarding parameter identifiability using information geometry, i.e. a model is [...]