Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 14, 2025

Laboratory-determined Phosphorus Flux from Lake Sediments as a Measure of Internal Phosphorus Loading
Published on: March 6, 2014
Episodic intensification of marine phosphorus burial over the last 80 million years
Jinzhou Peng1, Dengfeng Li2, Simon W Poulton3
1School of Marine Sciences, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Marine Resources and Coastal Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, Zhuhai, China.
Abstract:
Marine phosphatization events cause episodic carbonate fluorapatite (CFA) precipitation on seamounts, and are commonly linked to growth hiatuses in ferromanganese (Fe-Mn) crusts. However, the complete record of these events and their paleoenvironmental significance remains poorly understood, in large part due to poor age constraints. Here, we apply U-Pb dating to CFA in Fe-Mn crusts from Western Pacific seamounts. These data exhibit good alignment with Sr isotope ages, revealing six potential phosphatization events. This established CFA chronology tightens the timespan of phosphatization events and refines the age framework of Fe-Mn crusts. We subsequently utilize a multiproxy approach to demonstrate that the phosphatization events occurred coeval with the expansion of oceanic oxygen minimum zones. The Western Pacific Fe-Mn crusts thus document major perturbations in global oceanic phosphorus cycling, which appear to have been driven by climate-induced increases in primary productivity linked to changes in global ocean circulation.
Related Concept Videos
The Phosphorus Cycle
Primary Production
Global Climate Change
The Fossil Record
What are Biogeochemical Cycles?
Phosphoinositides and PIPs
Different phosphoinositides are synthesized and recruited on the cytosolic face of the plasma membrane. The localization of specific phosphoinositides concentrated in separate membrane...

