This project will use two new and promising techniques to address the important question of accumulation of organic matter in regions of the ocean where traditional methods of calculating accumulation cannot be used. Those methods depend on the presence of calcite, of which geochemical analyses can simultaneously provide age control and inferred production and carbon flux to the sediments. Regions with sporadic or absent calcite are among the most productive in the world (high northern and southern latitudes, continental margins), where the changes in accumulation are likely to have the greatest effect upon global carbon budgets. If the proposed work is successful, it opens the door to addressing questions of carbon accumulation in the present-understudied parts of the world ocean.
