Deep-sea coral geochemistry: Implication for the vital effect
Deep-sea corals hold a great potential as a key to important aspects of paleoceanography for at least two reasons, 1) they offer temporal high resolution records of deep-sea environment, because they have growth banding structures, 2) and they are well suited for studying vital effects, because the...
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Published in | Chemical geology Vol. 224; no. 4; pp. 212 - 222 |
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Main Authors | , , , , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Elsevier B.V
20.12.2005
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Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Deep-sea corals hold a great potential as a key to important aspects of paleoceanography for at least two reasons, 1) they offer temporal high resolution records of deep-sea environment, because they have growth banding structures, 2) and they are well suited for studying vital effects, because the deep-sea environment does not change over short time scales. However, the relationship between the chemical composition of deep-sea coral skeletons and environmental factors is not well understood. In this study, the chemical composition of deep-sea corals was measured in bulk individuals and along skeletal micro-structures. Among the bulk individuals,
δ
18O value and Sr
/
Ca ratio show a negative but weak correlation with ambient temperature. On the other hand, the Mg
/
Ca ratio has a positive, weak correlation with the temperature. Large variations were found among samples collected from similar temperature. The variation is up to 3.8‰ for
δ
18O, 0.9 mmol/mol for Sr
/
Ca ratios, and 0.78 mmol/mol for Mg
/
Ca ratios among samples with ambient average temperature within 1 °C. This variation may be due to a large vital effect. The centers of calcification (COCs), which were formed at high calcification rate, have lower Sr
/
Ca, U
/
Ca and higher Mg
/
Ca ratios than surrounding fasciculi. This chemical distribution supports the model that elemental incorporation depends on calcification rate. This suggests that calcification rate is a very important factor for the chemical composition in deep-sea corals and is one of the most significant mechanisms of the vital effect. Because of this large vital effect, further investigations are essential to use the deep-sea coral as a temperature proxy. |
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ISSN: | 0009-2541 1872-6836 |
DOI: | 10.1016/j.chemgeo.2005.08.009 |