Abstract
AbstractQuantifying the organic carbon (OC) sink in marine sediments is crucial for assessing how the marine carbon cycle regulates Earth’s climate. However, burial efficiency (BE) – the commonly-used metric reporting the percentage of OC deposited on the seafloor that becomes buried (beyond an arbitrary and often unspecified reference depth) – is loosely defined, misleading, and inconsistent. Here, we use a global diagenetic model to highlight orders-of-magnitude differences in sediment ages at fixed sub-seafloor depths (and vice-versa), and vastly different BE’s depending on sediment depth or age horizons used to calculate BE. We propose using transfer efficiencies (Teff’s) for quantifying sediment OC burial: Teff is numerically equivalent to BE but requires precise specification of spatial or temporal references, and emphasizes that OC degradation continues beyond these horizons. Ultimately, quantifying OC burial with precise sediment-depth and sediment-age-resolved metrics will enable a more consistent and transferable assessment of OC fluxes through the Earth system.
Funder
RCUK | Natural Environment Research Council
Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung
Human Frontier Science Program
Simons Foundation
Center for Dark Energy Biosphere Investigations
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
BELSPO FedtWin
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Subject
General Physics and Astronomy,General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology,General Chemistry,Multidisciplinary
Cited by
7 articles.
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