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The ocean is a critical component of the Earth's climate system, and the iron cycle plays a key role in ocean primary productivity and marine ecosystem function. Iron limitation has been known to limit the efficiency of the biological carbon pump.
Iron is a key micronutrient in primary productivity, [49] and a limiting nutrient in the Southern ocean, eastern equatorial Pacific, and the subarctic Pacific referred to as High-Nutrient, Low-Chlorophyll (HNLC) regions of the ocean. [50] Iron in the ocean cycles between plankton, aggregated particulates (non-bioavailable iron), and dissolved ...
A biogeochemical cycle, or more generally a cycle of matter, [1] is the movement and transformation of chemical elements and compounds between living organisms, the atmosphere, and the Earth's crust. Major biogeochemical cycles include the carbon cycle , the nitrogen cycle and the water cycle .
Marine chemistry, also known as ocean chemistry or chemical oceanography, is the study of the chemical composition and processes of the world’s oceans, including the interactions between seawater, the atmosphere, the seafloor, and marine organisms. [2]
Iron fertilization is a facet of geoengineering, which purposefully manipulates the Earth's climate system, typically in aspects of the carbon cycle or radiative forcing. Of current geoengineering interest is the possibility of accelerating the biological pump to increase export of carbon from the surface ocean.
Iron is a critical phytoplankton micronutrient necessary for enzyme catalysis and electron transport. [3] [4] Between the 1930s and '80s, it was hypothesized that iron is a limiting ocean micronutrient, but there were not sufficient methods reliably to detect iron in seawater to confirm this hypothesis. [5]
Ocean iron fertilization is an example of a geoengineering technique that involves intentional introduction of iron-rich deposits into oceans, and is aimed to enhance biological productivity of organisms in ocean waters in order to increase carbon dioxide (CO 2) uptake from the atmosphere, possibly resulting in mitigating its global warming effects.
Carbon cycle schematic showing the movement of carbon between land, atmosphere, and oceans in billions of tons (gigatons) per year. Yellow numbers are natural fluxes, red are human contributions, and white are stored carbon. The effects of the slow (or deep) carbon cycle, such as volcanic and tectonic activity are not included. [1]