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The effect of temperature on organic carbon degradation in marine sediments
The degradation of sedimentary particulate organic carbon (POC) is a key carbon cycle process that fuels the deep subseafloor biosphere. The reactivity of POC is expected to decrease with increasing sediment age, severely restricting the energy available to microorganisms. Conversely, increasing tem...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group
2015
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4671099/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26640172 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep17861 |
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author | Malinverno, Alberto Martinez, Ernesto A. |
author_facet | Malinverno, Alberto Martinez, Ernesto A. |
author_sort | Malinverno, Alberto |
collection | PubMed |
description | The degradation of sedimentary particulate organic carbon (POC) is a key carbon cycle process that fuels the deep subseafloor biosphere. The reactivity of POC is expected to decrease with increasing sediment age, severely restricting the energy available to microorganisms. Conversely, increasing temperatures during burial have been proposed to stimulate POC degradation, possibly supplying significant energy to the deep biosphere. To test the importance of temperature, we assembled POC measurements in two global sets of drill sites where sediments underwent either relatively low or high temperatures during burial, which should have resulted in different rates of POC degradation. For ages 5–10 Ma, the decrease of the average POC content with burial is clearly more pronounced in the sites with high temperature histories. Our results support the hypothesis that temperature is one of the fundamental controls on the rate of POC degradation within deeply buried marine sediments. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4671099 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2015 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-46710992015-12-11 The effect of temperature on organic carbon degradation in marine sediments Malinverno, Alberto Martinez, Ernesto A. Sci Rep Article The degradation of sedimentary particulate organic carbon (POC) is a key carbon cycle process that fuels the deep subseafloor biosphere. The reactivity of POC is expected to decrease with increasing sediment age, severely restricting the energy available to microorganisms. Conversely, increasing temperatures during burial have been proposed to stimulate POC degradation, possibly supplying significant energy to the deep biosphere. To test the importance of temperature, we assembled POC measurements in two global sets of drill sites where sediments underwent either relatively low or high temperatures during burial, which should have resulted in different rates of POC degradation. For ages 5–10 Ma, the decrease of the average POC content with burial is clearly more pronounced in the sites with high temperature histories. Our results support the hypothesis that temperature is one of the fundamental controls on the rate of POC degradation within deeply buried marine sediments. Nature Publishing Group 2015-12-07 /pmc/articles/PMC4671099/ /pubmed/26640172 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep17861 Text en Copyright © 2015, Macmillan Publishers Limited http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
spellingShingle | Article Malinverno, Alberto Martinez, Ernesto A. The effect of temperature on organic carbon degradation in marine sediments |
title | The effect of temperature on organic carbon degradation in marine sediments |
title_full | The effect of temperature on organic carbon degradation in marine sediments |
title_fullStr | The effect of temperature on organic carbon degradation in marine sediments |
title_full_unstemmed | The effect of temperature on organic carbon degradation in marine sediments |
title_short | The effect of temperature on organic carbon degradation in marine sediments |
title_sort | effect of temperature on organic carbon degradation in marine sediments |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4671099/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26640172 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep17861 |
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