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This dataset includes the concentrations of dissolved inorganic macronutrients (phosphate, nitrate plus nitrite (N+N), silicic acid, and nitrite), chlorophyll a and phaeophytin, and particulate organic nitrogen and carbon measured shipboard in samples collected from phytoplankton shipboard incubation experiments conducted on the FeOA cruise SKQ202209S on R/V Sikuliaq in the Northeast Pacific from June to July 2022. This project investigates the effects of ocean acidification on the associations between iron and organic ligands in seawater and on iron bioavailability to marine phytoplankton communities. The project used a combination of shipboard incubation experiments and depth profiles to characterize iron speciation and cycling across coastal upwelling, oligotrophic open ocean, and iron-limited subarctic oceanographic regimes in the NE Pacific. Surface seawater was incubated at pH of 8.1, 7.6, and 7.1 with natural iron and with dissolved iron amendments in order to investigate interactions between pH and iron bioavailability across the different regimes. Understanding how pH influences iron and its relationship with ligands provides important information for assessing the impacts of ocean acidification on primary production and biogeochemical processes.
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This content will become publicly available on March 27, 2026
Contrasting the Marine Biogeochemical Cycles of Iron and Scandium in the California Current System
Abstract The oceanic biogeochemical cycling of iron is globally important yet difficult to fully understand due to the many chemical processes involved. There is potential to use scandium, which has a similar ionic size and charge density to trivalent iron but lacks redox cycling, as a simpler analog for specific parts of the iron cycle, if we can sufficiently develop our understanding of scandium's reactivity. Here we move closer to this understanding. We look at particle reactivity and solubility through a 24‐hr incubation experiment: 5 nmol/kg of dissolved scandium and/or iron were added to filtered and unfiltered California Current System water. Particulate scandium formed only in the unfiltered treatments, at a quantity unlikely to have been taken up biologically. This is the first direct observation of scavenging of scandium, an attribute shared with iron. Our results also serve as the first test of scandium solubility in seawater: 1.9 nmol/kg of dissolved scandium was stable in the filtered treatment, 50 times more than the highest natural concentrations so far observed. This indicates that, in contrast to iron, scandium's oceanic cycling is unlikely to be influenced by solubility limits. We also compare particulate depth profiles: labile particulate iron was disproportionally higher than that of scandium in shelf‐influenced samples, likely due to iron reductively dissolving in the sediments, which scandium cannot do, and then precipitating in oxic seawater. Due to this combination of behaviors, our results suggest that paired observations of scandium and iron may help distinguish between iron sourced from sediment resuspension and reductive dissolution.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1751805
- PAR ID:
- 10585670
- Publisher / Repository:
- DOI PREFIX: 10.1029
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans
- Volume:
- 130
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 2169-9275
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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