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Project details
| Title: | Iron Biogeochemical Cycling at the Southern Ocean Time Series Site |
| Id: | 2558 |
| Investigator(s): | Michael Elwood
University of Tasmania [details] |
| Description: | The subantarctic water mass forms a circumpolar ring which comprises half of the open waters of the Southern Ocean. Complex environmental forcing controls its productivity, ecology and biogeochemistry both in the present day and in the geological past. An improved mechanistic understanding of these controls on the marine biota is needed and will provide the context to better interpret observations being obtained at unparalleled resolution by the SOTS moorings. Our study will forge strong links with SOTS by determining how environmental forcing manifests itself in biological and biogeochemical signatures across a range of scales. A better understanding of this relationship will aid the development of a state-of-the-art coupled iron and carbon biogeochemical model which will be validated using future multi-property time-series observations. Our main aim is to enhance our understanding of the interlinked biogeochemical cycles of iron and carbon in the Southern Ocean to better understand how intra-seasonal, seasonal and interannual variability in iron supply and recycling influences the productivity and export of carbon into the ocean’s interior in the subantarctic circumpolar ring. Additional aims include: • Elucidation of the relative roles of iron supply versus biological and photochemical recycling in driving subantarctic primary productivity and export fluxes. • Resolution of the interplay of multiple environmental controls – irradiance, mixed layer depth, trace element supply (zinc, copper etc.), silicate supply, iron availability – across a range of temporal and spatial scales – to better predict changes in rates of primary productivity. • Enhancement of knowledge on the interplay of mesoscale and submesoscale physics and biogeochemistry in the vicinity of the SOTS site to better understand the degree of coupling and integration of surface ocean processes with those in the subsurface ocean (such as the sensors and particle traps on the SOTS mooring). • Quantification of the aeolian flux of micronutrients to the sea surface, using direct sampling of aerosols, rain, water column measurements of dissolved and particulate (from large volume ISP pumps) 232Th and 230Th concentrations, and beryllium-7 water sampling from the CTD. |
| Years: | 2020 |
There are no surveys directly linked to this project.