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Radionuclides can provide key information on the temporal dimension of environmental processes, given their well-known rates of radioactive decay and production. Naturally occurring radionuclides, such as 234Th and 210Po, have been used as powerful particle tracers in the marine environment to study particle cycling and vertical export. Since their application to quantify the magnitude of particulate organic carbon (POC) export in the 1990s, 234Th and, to a lesser extent, 210Po have been widely used to characterize the magnitude of the biological carbon pump (BCP). Combining both radionuclides, with their different half-lives, biogeochemical behaviors, and input sources to the ocean, can help to better constrain POC export and capture BCP dynamics that would be missed by a single tracer. Here, we review the studies that have simultaneously used 234Th and 210Po as tracers of POC export, emphasizing what can be learned from their joint application, and provide recommendations and future directions

Connectivity of particle-attached prokaryotes across continental margins and their potential use as particle source and organic carbon degradation proxies (CONPART).This campaign is part of the study of the connectivity of microbial communities associated with suspended particles on continental margins along a vertical gradient in the water column and horizontally along a submarine canyon to evaluate their potential use. as tracers of the origin and level of degradation of organic particles. The objective of the CONPART project is to improve our understanding of the interactions between the dynamics of particles and the microbial diversity associated with them and also to know their functionality to see if they are functionally diverse, and can adapt to the environmental changes that occur during the particulate matter transport

Seagrass meadows provide valuable socio-ecological ecosystem services, including a key role in climate change mitigation and adaption. Understanding the natural history of seagrass meadows across environmental gradients is crucial to deciphering the role of seagrasses in the global ocean. In this data collation, spatial and temporal patterns in seagrass meadow structure, biomass and production data are presented as a function of biotic and abiotic habitat characteristics. The biological traits compiled include measures of meadow structure (e.g. percent cover and shoot density), biomass (e.g. above-ground biomass) and production (e.g. shoot production). Categorical factors include bioregion, geotype (coastal or estuarine), genera and year of sampling. This dataset contains data extracted from peer-reviewed publications published between 1975 and 2020 based on a Web of Science search and includes 11 data variables across 12 seagrass genera. The dataset excludes data from mesocosm and field experiments, contains 14 271 data points extracted from 390 publications and is publicly available on the PANGAEA® data repository (https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.929968; Strydom et al., 2021). The top five most studied genera are Zostera, Thalassia, Cymodocea, Halodule and Halophila (84 % of data), and the least studied genera are Phyllospadix, Amphibolis and Thalassodendron (2.3 % of data). The data hotspot bioregion is the Tropical Indo-Pacific (25 % of data) followed by the Tropical Atlantic (21 %), whereas data for the other four bioregions are evenly spread (ranging between 13 and 15 % of total data within each bioregion). From the data compiled, 57 % related to seagrass biomass and 33 % to seagrass structure, while the least number of data were related to seagrass production (11 % of data). This data collation can inform several research fields beyond seagrass ecology, such as the development of nature-based solutions for climate change mitigation, which include readership i

Seagrass meadows provide valuable socio-ecological ecosystem services, including a key role in climate change mitigation and adaption. Understanding the natural history of seagrass meadows across environmental gradients is crucial to deciphering the role of seagrasses in the global ocean. In this data collation, spatial and temporal patterns in seagrass meadow structure, biomass and production data are presented as a function of biotic and abiotic habitat characteristics. The biological traits compiled include measures of meadow structure (e.g. percent cover and shoot density), biomass (e.g. above-ground biomass) and production (e.g. shoot production). Categorical factors include bioregion, geotype (coastal or estuarine), genera and year of sampling. This dataset contains data extracted from peer-reviewed publications published between 1975 and 2020 based on a Web of Science search and includes 11 data variables across 12 seagrass genera. The dataset excludes data from mesocosm and field experiments, contains 14271 data points extracted from 390 publications and is publicly available on the PANGAEA® data repository (10.1594/PANGAEA.929968; Strydom et al., 2021). The top five most studied genera are Zostera, Thalassia, Cymodocea, Halodule and Halophila (84 % of data), and the least studied genera are Phyllospadix, Amphibolis and Thalassodendron (2.3 % of data). The data hotspot bioregion is the Tropical Indo-Pacific (25 % of data) followed by the Tropical Atlantic (21 %), whereas data for the other four bioregions are evenly spread (ranging between 13 and 15 % of total data within each bioregion). From the data compiled, 57 % related to seagrass biomass and 33 % to seagrass structure, while the least number of data were related to seagrass production (11 % of data). This data collation can inform several research fields beyond seagrass ecology, such as the development of nature-based solutions for climate change mitigation, which include readership interested in blue

Antarctic polynyas are highly productive open water areas surrounded by ice where extensive phytoplankton blooms occur, but little is known about how these surface blooms influence carbon fluxes and prokaryotic communities from deeper waters. By sequencing the 16S rRNA gene, we explored the vertical connectivity of the prokaryotic assemblages associated with particles of three different sizes in two polynyas with different surface productivity, and we linked it to the magnitude of the particle export fluxes measured using thorium-234 (234Th) as particle tracer. Between the sunlit and the mesopelagic layers (700 m depth), we observed compositional changes in the prokaryotic communities associated with the three size-fractions, which were mostly dominated by Flavobacteriia, Alphaproteobacteria, and Gammaproteobacteria. Interestingly, the vertical differences between bacterial communities attached to the largest particles decreased with increasing 234Th export fluxes, indicating a more intense downward transport of surface prokaryotes in the most productive polynya. This was accompanied by a higher proportion of surface prokaryotic taxa detected in deep particle-attached microbial communities in the station with the highest 234Th export flux. Our results support recent studies evidencing links between surface productivity and deep prokaryotic communities and provide the first evidence of sinking particles acting as vectors of microbial diversity to depth in Antarctic polynyas, highlighting the direct influence of particle export in shaping the prokaryotic communities of mesopelagic waters.

Antarctic polynyas are highly productive open water areas surrounded by ice where extensive phytoplankton blooms occur, but little is known about how these surface blooms influence carbon fluxes and prokaryotic communities from deeper waters. By sequencing the 16S rRNA gene, we explored the vertical connectivity of the prokaryotic assemblages associated with particles of three different sizes in two polynyas with different surface productivity, and we linked it to the magnitude of the particle export fluxes measured using thorium-234 (234Th) as particle tracer. Between the sunlit and the mesopelagic layers (700 m depth), we observed compositional changes in the prokaryotic communities associated with the three size-fractions, which were mostly dominated by Flavobacteriia, Alphaproteobacteria, and Gammaproteobacteria. Interestingly, the vertical differences between bacterial communities attached to the largest particles decreased with increasing 234Th export fluxes, indicating a more intense downward transport of surface prokaryotes in the most productive polynya. This was accompanied by a higher proportion of surface prokaryotic taxa detected in deep particle-attached microbial communities in the station with the highest 234Th export flux. Our results support recent studies evidencing links between surface productivity and deep prokaryotic communities and provide the first evidence of sinking particles acting as vectors of microbial diversity to depth in Antarctic polynyas, highlighting the direct influence of particle export in shaping the prokaryotic communities of mesopelagic waters

Radionuclides, both from natural and anthropogenic origin, are powerful ocean tracers that provide key information on fluxes, pathways and time scales of marine processes. Their added value compared to hydrographic parameters (e.g., temperature and salinity) relies either on their known rates of radioactive decay and production or on their time-variable releases from sources. Both aspects introduce a temporal dimension that allows quantifying rates or time scales of marine processes. Their wide range of half-lives and historical inputs, together with their physicochemical characteristics allow tracing a broad spectrum of marine processes. This chapter aims at providing an overview of the application of radionuclides as tracers of ocean processes. The chapter is structured in four sections: The first part reviews the main principles of radioactivity and the origin of radionuclides. The second section introduces the key aspects that allow using radionuclides as ocean tracers, followed by (third section) three real and contemporary instructive examples that cover different marine processes and require radionuclides with specific properties: i) thorium-234/uranium-238 (234Th/238U) pair to quantify the biological pump, ii) radium (Ra) isotopes to estimate the magnitude of submarine groundwater discharge, and iii) iodine-129 (129I) to investigate the large-scale ocean circulation. Finally, this chapter provides a summary of the different methods and techniques used to measure radionuclides in seawater

Estimating 210Pb sources/sinks is significant for understanding the transport processes and chronology of sediment in coastal seas. Although submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) has been recognized as an important pathway for the transport of terrestrial chemical components, the 210Pb source in coastal seas from SGD is generally ignored. In the present work, we built the 210Pb budget by analyzing the 210Pb activity concentrations in submarine groundwater (i.e., coastal well water and pore water), river water, and seawater in a typical aquaculture bay along the Chinese coast in the Beibu Gulf (Qinzhou Bay). The results showed that the 210Pb activity concentrations (Bq/m3) in well water, porewater, seawater and river water were 6.0 ± 3.6 (n = 13), 3.8 ± 0.4 (n = 2), 1.2 ± 0.3 (n = 4), and 1.9 ± 0.6 (n = 3), respectively. The SGD-derived 210Pb flux was calculated to be (3.3 ± 0.4) × 1010 Bq/yr (approximately 1.4 times the river input flux), which accounted for ∼18% of the total 210Pb sources in Qinzhou Bay. Although most of the 210Pb (>66%) would be buried into the sediment of this coastal bay, SGD-discharged dissolved 210Pb can account for approximately half of the ocean mixing, which is the second most important 210Pb sink in Qinzhou Bay. Therefore, based on these estimates, we have shown that the 210Pb input from SGD can be an important source at the coastal sea scale and needs to be accounted for in coastal sea areas

© The Author(s), 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Roca-Marti, M., Puigcorbe, V., Castrillejo, M., Casacuberta, N., Garcia-Orellana, J., Kirk Cochran, J., & Masque, P. Quantifying Po-210/Pb-210 disequilibrium in seawater: a comparison of two precipitation methods with differing results. Frontiers in Marine Science, 8, (2021): 684484, https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2021.684484., The disequilibrium between lead-210 (210Pb) and polonium-210 (210Po) is increasingly used in oceanography to quantify particulate organic carbon (POC) export from the upper ocean. This proxy is based on the deficits of 210Po typically observed in the upper water column due to the preferential removal of 210Po relative to 210Pb by sinking particles. Yet, a number of studies have reported unexpected large 210Po deficits in the deep ocean indicating scavenging of 210Po despite its radioactive mean life of ∼ 200 days. Two precipitation methods, Fe(OH)3 and Co-APDC, are typically used to concentrate Pb and Po from seawater samples, and deep 210Po deficits raise the question whether this feature is biogeochemically consistent or there is a methodological issue. Here, we present a compilation of 210Pb and 210Po studies that suggests that 210Po deficits at depths >300 m are more often observed in studies where Fe(OH)3 is used to precipitate Pb and Po from seawater, than in those using Co-APDC (in 68 versus 33% of the profiles analyzed for each method, respectively). In order to test whether 210Po/210Pb disequilibrium can be partly related to a methodological artifact, we directly compared the total activities of 210Pb and 210Po in four duplicate ocean depth-profiles determined by using Fe(OH)3 and Co-APDC on unfiltered seawater samples. While both methods produced the same 210Pb activities, results from the Co-APDC method showed equilibrium between 210Pb and 210Po below 100 m, whereas the Fe(OH)3 method resulted in activities of 210Po significantly lower than 210Pb throughout the entire water column. These results show that 210Po deficits in deep waters, but also in the upper ocean, may be greater when calculated using a commonly used Fe(OH)3 protocol. This finding has potential implications for the use of the 210Po/210Pb pair as a tracer of particle export in the oceans because 210Po (and thus POC) fluxes calculated using Fe(OH)3 on unfiltered seawater samples may be overe, MR-M was supported by an Endeavour Research Fellowship (6054) from the Australian Government, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s Ocean Twilight Zone study, and the Ocean Frontier Institute. VP received funding from the Edith Cowan University under the Early Career Researcher Grant Scheme (G1003456) and the Collaboration Enhancement Scheme (G1003362). MC is currently funded by an ETH Zurich Postdoctoral Fellowship Program (17-2 FEL-30), co-funded by the Marie Curie Actions for People COFUND Program. Support to JKC was provided by the National Science Foundation grant OCE-1736591. The authors acknowledge the financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities through the “María de Maeztu” program for Units of Excellence (CEX2019-000940-M), the Australian Research Council LIEF Project (LE170100219), and the Generalitat de Catalunya (MERS; 2017 SGR-1588).

© The Author(s), 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Clevenger, S. J., Benitez-Nelson, C. R., Drysdale, J., Pike, S., Puigcorbe, V., & Buesseler, K. O. Review of the analysis of Th-234 in small volume (2-4 L) seawater samples: improvements and recommendations. Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry, 329(1), (2021): 1–13, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10967-021-07772-2., The short-lived radionuclide 234Th is widely used to study particle scavenging and transport from the upper ocean to deeper waters. This manuscript optimizes, reviews and validates the collection, processing and analyses of total 234Th in seawater and suggests areas of further improvements. The standard 234Th protocol method consists of scavenging 234Th from seawater via a MnO2 precipitate, beta counting, and using chemical recoveries determined by adding 230Th. The revised protocol decreases sample volumes to 2 L, shortens wait times between steps, and simplifies the chemical recovery process, expanding the ability to more rapidly and safely apply the 234Th method., The authors would like to acknowledge support from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the EXport Processes in the Ocean from RemoTe Sensing (EXPORTS) program awards 80NSSC17K0555; and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s Ocean Twilight Zone study for KOB and SJC.

El investigador isleño Francisco Cornejo ha sido una de las tres personas que ha conseguido este año ser seleccionado para poder disfrutar de una de las becas Junior Leader la Caixa. Se trata de una ayudas de tres años dirigida a la contratación de jóvenes investigadores a las que el ICM (Instituto de Ciencias del Mar) ha podido acceder ahora por primera vez gracias a la obtención, el año pasado, del distintivo de excelencia Severo Ochoa

The short-lived radionuclide 234Th is widely used to study particle scavenging and transport from the upper ocean to deeper waters. This manuscript optimizes, reviews and validates the collection, processing and analyses of total 234Th in seawater and suggests areas of further improvements. The standard 234Th protocol method consists of scavenging 234Th from seawater via a MnO2 precipitate, beta counting, and using chemical recoveries determined by adding 230Th. The revised protocol decreases sample volumes to 2 L, shortens wait times between steps, and simplifies the chemical recovery process, expanding the ability to more rapidly and safely apply the 234Th method.

High mercury (Hg) levels have been observed for arctic biota, despite limited local sources of anthropogenic Hg in the Arctic. Scavenging of Hg exerts an important control on the residence time of Hg in surface waters. The downward Hg export flux and Hg burial rates in bottom sediments are not well-constrained as a result of the lack of particulate Hg (Hgp) observations in the Arctic Ocean. Here, we estimated downward Hg export flux based on Hg concentrations in suspended particulate matter (SPM) and using the radionuclide pair 234Th/238U, coupled to Hgp/234Th ratios in particles. Using new observations made during the German GEOTRACES TransArcII (GN04) and the U.S. Arctic GEOTRACES (GN01) cruises in August–October 2015, we estimated the Hgp export flux in the central Arctic Ocean and the outer shelf. We find that 81 ± 58 Mg year–1 Hgp is exported from the upper 100 m, of which 16 ± 10 Mg year–1 is ultimately buried in marine sediments. An extrapolation to the entire Arctic Ocean, including the inner shelf, results in 156 Mg year–1Hgp export from the surface ocean and 28 Mg year–1 Hg burial rate. Our study shows that the Hgp export flux could be higher than previously thought, and this should be taken into consideration for future arctic Hg budget estimations.

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2019. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research-Oceans 124(5), (2019): 2943-2968, doi:10.1029/2019JC015071., In the Southern Ocean, polynyas exhibit enhanced rates of primary productivity and represent large seasonal sinks for atmospheric CO2. Three contrasting east Antarctic polynyas were visited in late December to early January 2017: the Dalton, Mertz, and Ninnis polynyas. In the Mertz and Ninnis polynyas, phytoplankton biomass (average of 322 and 354 mg chlorophyll a (Chl a)/m2, respectively) and net community production (5.3 and 4.6 mol C/m2, respectively) were approximately 3 times those measured in the Dalton polynya (average of 122 mg Chl a/m2 and 1.8 mol C/m2). Phytoplankton communities also differed between the polynyas. Diatoms were thriving in the Mertz and Ninnis polynyas but not in the Dalton polynya, where Phaeocystis antarctica dominated. These strong regional differences were explored using physiological, biological, and physical parameters. The most likely drivers of the observed higher productivity in the Mertz and Ninnis were the relatively shallow inflow of iron‐rich modified Circumpolar Deep Water onto the shelf as well as a very large sea ice meltwater contribution. The productivity contrast between the three polynyas could not be explained by (1) the input of glacial meltwater, (2) the presence of Ice Shelf Water, or (3) stratification of the mixed layer. Our results show that physical drivers regulate the productivity of polynyas, suggesting that the response of biological productivity and carbon export to future change will vary among polynyas., This work was cofunded by the Australian Antarctic Division research projects AAS 4131 and 4291. This project was also supported by the Australian Government Cooperative Research Centres Programme through the Antarctic Climate & Ecosystems (ACE CRC). S. Moreau and C. Genovese were supported by the Australian Research Council's Special Research Initiative for Antarctic Gateway Partnership (project ID SR140300001). V. Puigcorbé and M. Roca‐Martí are grateful for the support from Pere Masque and Edith Cowan University. M.C. Arroyo was supported by the Dickhut Fellowship, administered by the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. The authors would like to thank the officers and crew of the R/V Aurora Australis for their logistic support, the CSIRO hydrochemists for their analyses of nutrient concentrations, and E. J. Yang for her microscope analysis of phytoplankton species. We also want to thank two anonymous reviewers for their very good comments on this study. The data presented in this paper are available on the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) Data Centre at https://data.aad.gov.au/aadc/metadata/metadata_by_parameter.cfm., 2019-09-28

Author Posting. © The Authors, 2018. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here under a nonexclusive, irrevocable, paid-up, worldwide license granted to WHOI. It is made available for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Roca-Marti, M., Puigcorbe, V., Friedrich, J., van der Loeff, M. R., Rabe, B., Korhonen, M., Camara-Mor, P., Garcia-Orellana, J., & Masque, P. (2018). Distribution of pb-210 and po-210 in the arctic water column during the 2007 sea-ice minimum: Particle export in the ice-covered basins. Deep-Sea Research Part I-Oceanographic Research Papers, 142, 94-106, doi:10.1016/j.dsr.2018.09.011., 210Pb and 210Po are naturally occurring radionuclides that are commonly used as a proxy for particle and carbon export. In this study, the distribution of the 210Po/210Pb pair was investigated in the water column of the Barents, Kara and Laptev Seas and the Nansen, Amundsen and Makarov Basins in order to understand the particle dynamics in the Arctic Ocean during the 2007 sea-ice minimum (August-September). Minimum activities of total 210Pb and 210Po were found in the upper and lower haloclines (approx. 60-130 m), which are partly attributed to particle scavenging over the shelves, boundary current transport and subsequent advection of the water with low 210Pb and 210Po activities into the central Arctic. Widespread and substantial (>50%) deficits of 210Po with respect to 210Pb were detected from surface waters to 200 m on the shelves, but also in the basins. This was particularly important in the Makarov Basin where, despite very low chlorophyll-a levels, estimates of annual new primary production were three times higher than in the Eurasian Basin. In the Nansen, Amundsen and Makarov 32 Basins, estimates of annual new primary production correlated with the deficits of 210Po in the upper 200 m of the water column, suggesting that in situ production and subsequent export of biogenic material were the mechanisms that controlled the removal of 210Po in the central Arctic. Unlike 210Po, 234Th deficits measured during the same expedition were found to be very small and not significant below 25 m in the basins (Cai et al., 2010), which indicates, given the shorter half-life of 234Th, that particle export fluxes in the central Arctic would have been higher before July-August in 2007 than later in the season., We would like to thank the crew of the R/V Polarstern and the scientists on board for their cooperation during the ARK-XXII/2 expedition. We greatly appreciate the hard work of Oliver Lechtenfeld who collected and processed the samples on board. Thanks to Dorothea Bauch for sharing her results on freshwater origin and Adam Ulfsbo for providing insightful comments on the estimates of primary production. This project was partly supported by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (CTM2011-28452, Spain). We wish to acknowledge the support of the Generalitat de Catalunya to the research group MERS (2017 SGR-1588). This work is contributing to the ICTA ‘Unit of Excellence’ (MinECo, MDM2015-0552). M.R.-M. was supported by a Spanish PhD fellowship (AP2010-2510) and an Australian postdoctoral fellowship (2017 Endeavour Research Fellowship)., 2019-10-22