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Marine sediment, or ocean sediment, or seafloor sediment, are deposits of insoluble particles that have accumulated on the seafloor.These particles either have their origins in soil and rocks and have been transported from the land to the sea, mainly by rivers but also by dust carried by wind and by the flow of glaciers into the sea, or they are biogenic deposits from marine organisms or from ...
A marine food web is a food web of marine life. At the base of the ocean food web are single-celled algae and other plant-like organisms known as phytoplankton . The second trophic level ( primary consumers ) is occupied by zooplankton which feed off the phytoplankton .
The marine carbon cycle is a central to the global carbon cycle and contains both inorganic carbon (carbon not associated with a living thing, such as carbon dioxide) and organic carbon (carbon that is, or has been, incorporated into a living thing). Part of the marine carbon cycle transforms carbon between non-living and living matter.
The two primary types of ooze are siliceous, which is composed primarily of silica (SiO 2), and calcareous or carbonate, which is mostly calcium carbonate (CaCO 3). [1] In an area in which biogenous is the dominant sediment type, the composition of microorganisms in that location determines to which category it is classified.
The first step in the biological pump is the synthesis of both organic and inorganic carbon compounds by phytoplankton in the uppermost, sunlit layers of the ocean. [13] Organic compounds in the form of sugars, carbohydrates, lipids, and proteins are synthesized during the process of photosynthesis: CO 2 + H 2 O + light → CH 2 O + O 2
Besides the importance of "exported" organic carbon as a food source for deep ocean organisms, the biological carbon pump provides a valuable ecosystem function: Exported organic carbon transports an estimated 5–20 Gt C each year to the deep ocean, [60] where some of it (~0.2–0.5 Gt C) [61] is sequestered for several millennia. The ...
The aquatic microbial loop is a marine trophic pathway which incorporates dissolved organic carbon into the food chain.. The microbial loop describes a trophic pathway where, in aquatic systems, dissolved organic carbon (DOC) is returned to higher trophic levels via its incorporation into bacterial biomass, and then coupled with the classic food chain formed by phytoplankton-zooplankton-nekton.
Marine primary production is the chemical synthesis in the ocean of organic compounds from atmospheric or dissolved carbon dioxide. It principally occurs through the process of photosynthesis , which uses light as its source of energy, but it also occurs through chemosynthesis , which uses the oxidation or reduction of inorganic chemical ...