Total alkalinity change: The perspective of phytoplankton stoichiometry

Abstract

AbstractMany biogeochemical processes change total alkalinity: this has been reported for carbonate precipitation and dissolution, uptake and release of various nitrogen‐containing compounds, uptake of phosphate, sulfate reduction combined with methane oxidation. However, the list is not exhaustive. Here we discuss additional processes, namely the uptake of Mg, K, Ca by phytoplankton, and calculate their contribution based on the explicit conservative expression for TA and an extended (compared to Redfield's C : N : P) stoichiometry of phytoplankton. These additional contributions are of the same order of magnitude as that of phosphate uptake and thus much smaller than the contribution from nitrate uptake and of opposite sign to the contribution by nitrate and phosphate uptake.