Geochemistry: up and down and all around the oceans
A principal theme is the Earth's carbon cycle and a major data set used is that produced by the American GEOSECS (Geochemical Ocean Sections) programme. The book explores the links between carbon in the atmosphere, sea water and oceanic sediments, showing how this focal element in large part controls the chemistry of sea water and the distribution of sediment types, and how perturbations to carbon sources can be linked to past and future changes in oceanic chemistry. It provides, too, a topical summary of how chemical tracers give key information on water movements. Carbon isotopes play a central role in such studies: carbon-14, together with the nutrients silicate and phosphate, and tritium, radon-222, radium-228, helium-3 etc., to trace the movements of water through the deep sea and the oceanic thermocline; carbon-13 to trace differences in phosphate between water masses, thus permitting reconstructions of ocean chemistry in glacial times; and carbon-13 and carbon-14 to constrain and refine models of the oceans' uptake of carbon dioxide produced by the burning of fossil fuels. Wrapped around this account of the marine carbon cycle are data and ideas emphasizing the chemical dynamics of the oceans and the means of investigating them: the uranium and thorium decay chains for determining mixing and accumulation rates; lead and neodymium isotopes as sources and reactivity tracers; excess helium as a hydrothermal tracer; and so on.
- OSTI ID:
- 6848919
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: From review by Henry Elderfield, Univ. of Cambridge, Nature, Vol. 304, 380(28 Jul 1983)
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
SEAS
CARBON CYCLE
GEOCHEMISTRY
ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY
CARBON 13
CARBON 14
CORRELATIONS
GEOLOGIC HISTORY
HELIUM 3
PHOSPHATES
RADIUM 228
RADON 222
SEAWATER
SEDIMENTS
SILICATE MINERALS
TRACER TECHNIQUES
TRITIUM
ALKALINE EARTH ISOTOPES
ALPHA DECAY RADIOISOTOPES
BETA DECAY RADIOISOTOPES
BETA-MINUS DECAY RADIOISOTOPES
CARBON ISOTOPES
CHEMISTRY
DAYS LIVING RADIOISOTOPES
EVEN-EVEN NUCLEI
EVEN-ODD NUCLEI
HEAVY NUCLEI
HELIUM ISOTOPES
HYDROGEN COMPOUNDS
HYDROGEN ISOTOPES
ISOTOPE APPLICATIONS
ISOTOPES
LIGHT NUCLEI
MINERALS
NUCLEI
ODD-EVEN NUCLEI
OXYGEN COMPOUNDS
PHOSPHORUS COMPOUNDS
RADIOISOTOPES
RADIUM ISOTOPES
RADON ISOTOPES
STABLE ISOTOPES
SURFACE WATERS
WATER
YEARS LIVING RADIOISOTOPES
580500* - Oceanography- (1980-1989)