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Salt marshes are recognized as blue carbon ecosystems for their ability to rapidly sequester organic carbon (OC) via sedimentation. For this reason, there is growing interest in managing these systems to help mitigate climate change. However, in order for sediment accretion to offset ongoing CO2 emissions, organic matter undergoing burial must be derived from contemporary primary production. To investigate the provenance of OC sequestered by salt marshes, we analyzed the concentration and isotope composition (δ13C and Δ14C) of sedimentary OC in two minerogenic marshes in San Francisco Bay, California, USA. Data from the low marsh dominated by Spartinaspp. show that autochthonous OC is entering the sediment matrix and may in part be stabilized through incorporation into the mineral‐bound pool. However, the sedimentary OC stock as a whole is dominated by material with low values of δ13C (~ −20 to −25‰) and Δ14C (~ 100 to −300‰) indicating a preponderance of allochthonous OC that was retained in other OC reservoirs for 102 to 103 years prior to deposition in the marsh. Diagenetic modeling of OC and its δ13C values further shows that autochthonous OC is lost from the sediment profile at a much faster rate than allochthonous OC. The rapid turnover of contemporary autochthonous OC ("fast carbon") relative to the apparent stability of old allochthonous OC ("slow carbon") suggest that carbon burial at these sites is largely decoupled from ongoing CO2 emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Phosphate and other oxo-anions have been shown to stimulate the rate of iron loading into ferritin (J. Polanams, A.D. Ray, R.K. Watt, Inorg. Chem. 44 (2005) 3203–3209). This study was undertaken to determine if accelerated iron loading was a specific effect for phosphate and closely associated oxo-anions or if it was a general anion effect. Controls were also performed with mono-valent cations to determine the effect of these cations on iron loading into ferritin. Cations were shown to slow the rate of iron loading into ferritin. Fluoride and iodide were shown to slow the iron loading process of ferritin. Sulfate was also shown to slow iron loading into ferritin to a more significant extent than the cations or halides tested. The trigonal planar oxo-anions, carbonate and nitrate, did not inhibit or stimulate iron loading. We conclude that the increased rate of iron loading into ferritin is specific to phosphate and other closely associated tetrahedral oxo-anion analogs, that the effect is driven by the insolubility of the iron and anion complex, and that in general, cations and anions slow the rate of iron loading into ferritin. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]