Ocean Biogeochemical Dynamics
Sarmiento & Gruber, 2006
Princeton University Press
(available from the PUP website)
OUTLINE:
Ocean Biogeochemical Dynamics provides a broad theoretical framework upon which graduate students and upper-level undergraduates can formulate an understanding of the processes that control the mean concentration and distribution of biologically utilized elements and compounds in the ocean. Though it is written as a textbook, it will also be of interest to more advanced scientists as a wide-ranging synthesis of our present understanding of ocean biogeochemical processes.
The first two chapters of the book provide an introductory overview of biogeochemical and physical oceanography. The next four chapters concentrate on processes at the air-sea interface, the production of organic matter in the upper ocean, the remineralization of organic matter in the water column, and the processing of organic matter in the sediments. The focus of these chapters is on analyzing the cycles of organic carbon, oxygen, and nutrients.
The next three chapters round out the authors' coverage of ocean biogeochemical cycles with discussions of silica, dissolved inorganic carbon and alkalinity, and CaCO3. The final chapter discusses applications of ocean biogeochemistry to our understanding of the role of the ocean carbon cycle in interannual to decadal variability, paleoclimatology, and the anthropogenic carbon budget. The problem sets included at the end of each chapter encourage students to ask critical questions in this exciting new field. While much of the approach is mathematical, the math is at a level that should be accessible to students with a year or two of college level mathematics and/or physics.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1: Introduction
Why are elements not distributed evenly in the ocean? Why are the concentrations of some elements many thousand times lower in seawater in comparison to their concentration in the inflowing rivers? Dynamic versus equilibrium control of ocean chemical concentrations.
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Chapter 2: Ocean Transport
Overview of large-scale ocean circulation. Wind-driven circulation, Sverdrup balance, Stommel gyre, thermohaline circulation, mixing, geostrophy, circulation tracers, interannual variability.
Chapter 3: Air-sea interface
Solubility and physics of air-sea gas exchange
Chapter 4: Organic matter production
Primary production in the ocean, primary producers, functional groups, light and nutrient limitation, grazing, seasonal cycle, spring bloom, nitrogen fixation.
Chapter 5: Organic matter export and remineralization
Water column remineralization, respiration, bacterial breakdown, denitrification, dissolved organic carbon.
Chapter 6: Diagenesis
Organic matter remineralization in the sediments.
Chapter 7: Silicate cycling
Production of silicious materials by diatoms, export, dissolution in the water column and in the sediments.
Chapter 8: Carbon cycling
Apply the concepts presented in the earlier chapters to carbon. Carbon chemistry, carbon cycling, seasonal variability, export and remineralization.
Chapter 9: CaCO3 cycling
Calcium carbonate cycling, production, dissolution, sediments, CaCO3 compensation
Chapter 10: Oceanic carbon cycle, atmospheric CO2 and climate
Topical problems on ocean and global carbon cycle. Anthropogenic perturbation, interannual variability, glacial-interglacial CO2 changes