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Unraveling the Unseen Players in the Ocean - A Field Guide to Water Chemistry and Marine Microbiology

Unraveling the Unseen Players in the Ocean - A Field Guide to Water Chemistry and Marine Microbiology

Published on: November 5, 2014

Major structural components in freshwater dissolved organic matter.

Buuan Lam¹, Andrew Baer, Mehran Alaee

¹Department of Chemistry, University of Toronto Scarborough, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M1C 1A4.

Environmental Science & Technology

|January 19, 2008

Summary

Researchers identified major structural components in Lake Ontario dissolved organic matter (DOM), revealing a complex aliphatic nature. This finding advances our understanding of DOM

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Single-throughput Complementary High-resolution Analytical Techniques for Characterizing Complex Natural Organic Matter Mixtures

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Published on: January 7, 2019

Area of Science:

Environmental Chemistry
Organic Geochemistry
Spectroscopy

Background:

Dissolved organic matter (DOM) is crucial for global carbon cycling and pollutant transport.
The molecular complexity of DOM hinders a full understanding of its structural components.
Identifying DOM structures is key to predicting environmental processes.

Purpose of the Study:

To elucidate the major structural components of dissolved organic matter in Lake Ontario.
To characterize the aliphatic and aromatic constituents within freshwater DOM.
To investigate the origins and transformations of DOM precursors.

Main Methods:

Utilized multidimensional nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy.
Applied long-range proton-carbon correlation techniques.
Analyzed structural components including carboxyl-rich alicyclic molecules (CRAM) and heteropolysaccharides.

Main Results:

Identified carboxyl-rich alicyclic molecules (CRAM), heteropolysaccharides, and aromatic compounds in Lake Ontario DOM.
Confirmed the presence of material derived from linear terpenoids (MDLT).
Suggested that freshwater DOM is predominantly aliphatic, with CRAM and MDLT originating from cyclic and linear terpenoids, respectively.

Conclusions:

Freshwater DOM shares structural similarities with marine DOM, particularly in CRAM and aromatic content.
Terpenoids are significant precursors for DOM formation in aquatic environments.
Further research is needed to determine the terrestrial/aquatic origin and transformation pathways (biological/photochemical) of these DOM precursors in Lake Ontario.