9616851 Prahl Determining how much of the organic matter found in marine sediments originates from marine primary production and how much was transported from land is one of the major problems of modern organic geochemistry. The question of terrestrial contribution to deep-sea sediments impacts upon our understanding of the evolution of the sedimentary record, including its usefulness in understanding past, and future climatic trends in relation to the global dynamics of carbon and carbon dioxide. To the extent that transport from land to the deep ocean is aeolian, as is generally the case for the transport of iron, there may even be links with factors controlling oceanic primary production. In this study the principal investigator will use plant wax analysis and carbon-13 measurements to estimate the amounts of terrestrial and oceanic carbon in sediment from several deep-ocean sites. He will use the C-13 and wax chemistry of modern-day marine plankton and terrestrial plant materials as end-members of a scale along which analytical results for arbitrary sediments may be placed. The approach will involved development and validation of this method for characterizing the deep-sea sediment carbon pool.
