Project: Collaborative Research: US GEOTRACES GP17-ANT: Iron redox cycling in the Amundsen Sea in the water column and shelf sediments

NSF Award Abstract:
The Amundsen Sea is one of the most rapidly changing areas along the Antarctic coast, with some of the fastest rates of glacial melting on the continent. There is great interest in the role of iron in controlling primary production and carbon and nutrient cycling within the Amundsen Sea, and it is probably an important source of iron to offshore waters of the Southern Ocean, which are rich in nutrients but iron limited. The work is part of the US GEOTRACES GP17-ANT cruise to the Amundsen Sea, a multi-investigator study of trace elements and isotope cycling. This work will study how iron is mobilized from sediments at the seafloor of the Amundsen basin. Such mobilization is influenced by two factors directly linked to climate change. Glacial melting increases ice-free areas known as polynyas, which experience large blooms of phytoplankton. Organic matter from these blooms eventually reaches the seafloor, creating low-oxygen conditions that accelerate iron transport into the overlying waters. Moreover, accelerated melting of glaciers will increase the transport of this iron to the surface via the buoyant “meltwater pump” along the glacier/ocean interface. These processes create feedbacks between climate and biological productivity that must be understood to develop models with a useful predictive capability. The broader impacts include partnering with University of Southern California Joint Educational Project and a PolarTREC teacher to create curriculum based on GEOTRACES Antarctic Expedition, which will be disseminated to 15 elementary school in Los Angeles area and develop online data exploration modules to encourage data-based learning in oceanography classes.

This collaborative project will investigate iron redox cycling between sediments and water column of the Amundsen Sea and exchange with the Southern Ocean by determining iron (II) concentrations and redox kinetics in the water column as well as fluxes of iron and other elements from the seafloor to the water column from porewater measurements. A major objective of the US GEOTRACES GP17-ANT cruise is to study the exchange of iron between the Amundsen Sea and the Southern Ocean. The proposed work is essential to identifying the sources of iron and controls on source fluxes as well as internal transformations that will determine its fate. The data product from the project will be integrated with the results of other investigators in a synthesis effort after the cruise, including dissolved and particulate iron and related metals like manganese, as well as important tracers of sediment sources like radium isotopes. Iron(II) oxidizes very slowly in these cold waters, and kinetics will be combined with iron(II) bottom water concentrations and benthic fluxes to evaluate the importance of the slow oxidation kinetics on iron transport away from the benthic boundary layer. Benthic-derived iodine (denoted as “excess iodine”), will be utilized as an important semi-conservative tracer of iron inputs. Iodine is a useful comparative element because both iron and iodine accumulate in sediments under oxidizing conditions and are released under reducing conditions. Iodine is of interest in its own right because Antarctic Shelf waters are a massive source of reactive iodine species to the atmosphere.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.