Goldschmidt 2018

Goldschmidt 2018
Dates: 12 – 17 August 2018
Location: Boston, USA

For further information: https://goldschmidt.info/2018/index

Abstract submission deadline: 30 March 2018

GEOTRACES session:

Session 07i: New Insights in Marine Trace Element Biogeochemistry

Conveners: Christian Schlosser, Florian Scholz, Rene Boiteau, Tim Conway, Daniel Ohnemus, Jennifer McKay, William Homoky and Jessica Fitzsimmons.

The cycling of trace elements in the ocean is strongly influenced by a combination of biotic and abiotic processes including biological utilization, water mass circulation, sources and sinks, and interactions with particles. Many trace elements are essential for life, while others may be toxic pollutants. Therefore, understanding the factors that control the distribution, reactivity, and bioavailability of these elements is important for predicting their effect on ecosystems and climate, and for using them as tracers of ocean processes. Recent advances in oceanography have begun to clarify the unique sources and chemical forms of these elements throughout the ocean. Examples include better constraints on the cycling and sources of dissolved elements by isotopic analyses, improved parametrization of benthic metal processes and fluxes in biogeochemical models, revelation of particulate and colloidal metal phases by size-partitioned analyses, and elucidation of siderophore, humic, and mineral forms of metals using novel applications of electrochemical, mass spectrometric, and x-ray spectroscopic methods. This session solicits submissions highlighting new findings about the processes that influence the marine biogeochemistry of marine trace elements and their isotopes in the past and present. We invite contributions that focus on the study of elemental isotope fractionation, biological uptake and remineralization, exchange processes at the sediment-bottom water and hydrothermal interfaces, metal speciation and redox chemistry, and biogeochemical modeling. Abstracts concerning new insights on elemental cycling from GEOTRACES ocean sections and process studies on the cycling of trace elements, and any other works focused on understanding the transformations of metals from the molecular to global scale are strongly encouraged. 

GEOTRACES-related session:

Session 07l: Carbon Storage in the Ocean now and over Time

Conveners: Laura Robinson, Gideon Henderson, Christopher Hayes, Barbel Honisch and Joe Stewart.

Keynote speaker: Richard Zeebe (University of Hawaii)

This session invites contributions that relate to mechanisms through which the oceans cycle and store carbon. We welcome studies that consider the natural system’s capacity to store carbon today and over geologic timescales, the rates of carbon cycle processes, and the biogeochemical pathways involved in the carbon cycle. We also welcome efforts to examine modern day geoengineering of the ocean’s biogeochemical systems.

Session 07m: Sedimentary biogeochemical cycling along continental margins: role of climate, tectonic setting, and oceanographic regimes

Conveners:  Sian Henley, Johan Faust, Silke Severmann, Robert Aller

Continental margins are regions of intense diagenetic cycling, sediment-water fluxes, and burial of biogenic and lithogenic debris.  Margins are generally characterized by high biological productivity and sediment accumulation rates. However, specific modes of benthic elemental cycling, authigenic mineral formation, and storage are strong functions of depositional environment, including physical dynamics and sediment sources.  The effects of climate change, such as decreasing sea-ice in the higher latitudes or changing precipitation patterns in drainage basins, have the potential to greatly alter benthic cycling and the exchange between sediments and the water column.   This session will explore and contrast benthic biogeochemical cycling along continental margins from a range of climatic and weathering regimes (e.g., drainage basin weathering, Corg reactivity), tectonic setting (active, passive margins), sediment types (permeable, impermeable), coastal processes (deltaic, non-deltaic), and oceanographic conditions (e.g., upwelling, ice cover, ventilation – oxygenation, tidal range). We particularly welcome contributions that focus on the origin, processing, fate, and characterization of organic and inorganic carbon, nutrients and metals within the context of modern climate, oceanographic and ecosystem change.