Award: OCE-1535854

Marine particles are essential for the cycling of most elements in the ocean, including carbon, major nutrients, and trace elements and isotopes. Particle cycling in the Arctic is profoundly different than other ocean basins. Extremely low biological production in the perennially ice-covered central Arctic leads to a biological carbon pump that is virtually shut down: the lowest measured biogenic particle fluxes of anywhere in the world have been measured in the Canada Basin of the western Arctic. Prior to this project, there had yet to be a comprehensive survey of the concentration and composition of suspended particles in the Arctic. We collected and determined the first full-ocean-depth section of the distribution and chemical composition of marine particles in the western Arctic ocean. Unlike most other oceans, where particle dynamics in the open ocean are dominated by biological production at the surface followed by vertical sinking and decomposition, the Arctic is profoundly influenced by its edges, with distinct chemical signatures of horizontal input from the vast continental shelves mixed with only small input from vertical sinking. Because the Arctic Ocean is experiencing major change as a result of global warming, our results provide a crucial baseline against which future studies can be compared. This project provided support for the training of a PhD student, whose dissertation is based largely on this project. It also provided support for an female postdoctoral scholar, who has now secured a faculty position. Last Modified: 10/29/2019 Submitted by: Phoebe J Lam