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The pelagic food web, showing the central involvement of marine microorganisms in how the ocean imports carbon and then exports it back to the atmosphere and ocean floor The biological pump (or ocean carbon biological pump or marine biological carbon pump ) is the ocean's biologically driven sequestration of carbon from the atmosphere and land ...
This is the dominant sink for dissolved calcium in the ocean. [114] Dead organisms sink to the bottom of the ocean, depositing layers of shell which over time cement to form limestone. This is the origin of both marine and terrestrial limestone. [57] Calcium precipitates into calcium carbonate according to the following equation:
A cold seep (sometimes called a cold vent) is an area of the ocean floor where seepage of fluids rich in hydrogen sulfide, methane, and other hydrocarbons occurs, often in the form of a brine pool. Cold does not mean that the temperature of the seepage is lower than that of the surrounding sea water; on the contrary, its temperature is often ...
The surface ocean engages in air-sea interactions and absorbs carbon dioxide (CO 2) from the atmosphere, making the ocean the Earth's largest sink for atmospheric CO 2. Carbon dioxide dissolves in and reacts with seawater to form carbonic acid. Subsequent reactions then produce carbonate (CO 3 2−), bicarbonate (HCO 3 −), and hydrogen (H ...
The air-sea CO 2 flux induced by a marine biological community can be determined by the rain ratio - the proportion of carbon from calcium carbonate compared to that from organic carbon in particulate matter sinking to the ocean floor, (PIC/POC). [19] The carbonate pump acts as a negative feedback on CO 2 taken into the ocean by the solubility ...
The global ocean covers more than 70% of the Earth's surface and is remarkably heterogeneous. Marine productive areas, and coastal ecosystems comprise a minor fraction of the ocean in terms of surface area, yet have an enormous impact on global biogeochemical cycles carried out by microbial communities, which represent 90% of the ocean's ...
The seabed (also known as the seafloor, sea floor, ocean floor, and ocean bottom) is the bottom of the ocean. All floors of the ocean are known as 'seabeds'. The structure of the seabed of the global ocean is governed by plate tectonics. Most of the ocean is very deep, where the seabed is known as the abyssal plain. Seafloor spreading creates ...
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 ...