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The transport of material to the oceans: the atmospheric pathway

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Marine Geochemistry

Abstract

The trophosphere is a reservoir in which particles have a relatively short residence time, usually in the order of days for those with radii in the range ~ 0.1 to ~ 10 μm and from which they are removed at about the same rate as they enter. The particles carried in the marine atmosphere have a different genetic history from those transported to the oceans via river run-off, one of the most important differences being that they do not undergo trapping, or modification, in the estuarine filter at the land/sea margins. At the present time, estuaries act as an effective trap for river-transported solids, holding back ~ 90% of RPM (see Sec. 6.1.2). Potentially, therefore, the atmosphere is perhaps the most important pathway for the long-range transport of particulate material directly to open-ocean areas. This has become increasingly apparent over the past two decades. For example, Delany et al. (1967) concluded that the land-derived material in equatorial North Atlantic deep-sea sediments deposited to the east of and on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge has been derived wholly from wind transport. Such long-range transport, spanning several thousand kilometres, has also been found over the Pacific Ocean, and Blank et al. (1985) estimated that almost all of the non-biogenic material in deep-sea sediments in the Central North Pacific is essentially aeolian in origin.

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    Roy Chester

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Chester, R. (1990). The transport of material to the oceans: the atmospheric pathway. In: Marine Geochemistry. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-9488-7_4

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