Dataset: Geochemical composition of sediment samples collected in the Equatorial Pacific during October and November 2020 on R/V Kilo Moana cruise KM2012

Water column, sediment, and pore water samples were collected following the methods in Abbott et al. (2015) during R/V Kilo Moana cruise KM2012 in October and November 2020. Sediment cores were collected using an MC800 multi-corer and sectioned at 1.2 centimeter (cm) intervals. Sediment samples were frozen onboard and freeze-dried in the lab. See 'Related Datasets' for the data from the water column and pore water samples.

Elemental concentrations, including the REEs, were analyzed at Oregon State University (OSU) using an Elemental Scientific seaFAST-pico offline preconcentration technique, and the procedure has been extensively documented as part of the GEOTRACES intercalibration effort (Behrens et al., 2016). Elemental concentrations of the εNd aliquots (~10 milliliters (mL)) were analyzed at ETH Zurich using Nobias Chelate-PA1 resin in a manual column procedure (K. Deng et al., 2022).

Isotope analysis of the εNd aliquots (400~700 mL of pore water or ~1.5 liters (L) of seawater) were done at ETH Zurich. Samples were buffered to a pH of 5.5 ± 5 and pre-concentrated using an in-house extraction manifold containing Nobias Chelate-PA1 resin. After pre-concentration, separation of Nd from the matrix elements and other REE was done using Eichrom RE and LN spec resins. Procedural blanks are <3 picograms (pg). Isotope analysis was done on an Neptune Plus MC-ICP-MS (Thermo-Fisher) following the procedure of Vance and Thirlwall (2002). Internally normalized sample data was renormalized to the 143Nd/144Nd ratio of La Jolla (Thirlwall, 1991). Repeated analysis of 8 parts per billion (ppb) La Jolla solutions results in a long-term external reproducibility of 0.27 ε (2σ). Nd isotope analysis was also quality-controlled by repeated measurements of the USGS reference materials BCR-2 (εNd = -0.11 ± 0.25, 2σ) and BHVO-2 (εNd = 6.70 ± 0.24, 2σ) at the same concentration (5-10 ppb) as the pore water samples in agreement with literature results (Jochum et al., 2005).

Nutrients were analyzed at Oregon State University using Technicon AutoAnalyzer II (phosphate and ammonium) and Alpkem RFA 300 (silicic acid, nitrate+nitrite). The method and data processing follow Gordon et al. (1993). DOC was analyzed with a V-CSN/TNM-1 (Shimadzu Corp, Kyoto, Japan) at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography following White et al. (2023).

Sediment samples were analysed for total organic carbon contents using a GVI (now Elementar) Isoprime 1000 with Eurovector EA at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences. Samples were measured for the total carbon (organic plus inorganic) and a separate sample split was acidified to remove carbonate and then measured for the organic fraction.

​X-ray diffraction (XRD) of freeze-dried raw samples were made at K/T GeoServices Inc. (Colorado, USA), using a Siemens D500 automated powder diffractometer equipped with a copper X-ray source (40kV, 30mA) and a scintillation X-ray detector. Semi-quantitative determinations of whole-sediment mineral amounts were done using Jade Software (Materials Data, Inc.) with the Whole Pattern Fitting option.