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      <title>Top Downloaded Articles This Week: Global Biogeochemical Cycles</title>
      <link>http://www.agu.org/contents/journals/ViewPublishedToday.do</link>
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      <language>en-us</language>
      <copyright>AGU</copyright>
      <docs>http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss</docs>
      <webMaster>webmaster@agu.org</webMaster>
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         <title>Dissolved zinc in the subarctic North Pacific and Bering Sea: Its distribution, speciation, and importance to primary producers</title>
         <link>http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2010GB004004</link>
         <description><![CDATA[The eastern subarctic North Pacific, an area of high nutrients and low chlorophyll, has been studied with respect to the potential for iron to control primary production. The geochemistry of zinc, a critical micronutrient for diatoms, is less well characterized. Total zinc concentrations and zinc speciation were measured in near-surface waters on transects across the subarctic North Pacific and across the Bering Sea. Total dissolved zinc concentrations in the near-surface ranged from 0.10 nmol L−1 to 1.15 nmol L−1 with lowest concentrations in the eastern portions of both the North Pacific and Bering Sea. Dissolved zinc speciation was dominated by complexation to strong organic ligands whose concentration ranged from 1.1 to 3.6 nmol L−1 with conditional stability constants (K′ZnL/Zn′) ranging from 109.3 to 1011.0. The importance of zinc to primary producers was evaluated by comparison to phytoplankton pigment concentrations and by performing a shipboard incubation. Zinc concentrations were positively correlated with two pigments that are characteristic of diatoms. At one station in the North Pacific, the addition of 0.75 nmol L−1 zinc resulted in a doubling of chlorophyll after 4 days.]]></description>
         <author>Rachel Wisniewski Jakuba, Mak A. Saito, James W. Moffett and Yan Xu</author>
         <category>Global Biogeochemical Cycles</category>
         <pubDate>26</pubDate>
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      <item>
         <title>Spatial and temporal variability of biogenic isoprene emissions from a temperate estuary</title>
         <link>http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2011GB004210</link>
         <description><![CDATA[Isoprene is important for its atmospheric impacts and the ecophysiological benefits it affords to emitting organisms; however, isoprene emissions from marine systems remain vastly understudied compared to terrestrial systems. This study investigates for the first time drivers of isoprene production in a temperate estuary, and the role this production may play in enabling organisms to tolerate the inherently wide range of environmental conditions. Intertidal sediment cores as well as high and low tide water samples were collected from four sites along the Colne Estuary, UK, every six weeks over a year. Isoprene concentrations in the water were significantly higher at low than high tide, and decreased toward the mouth of the estuary; sediment production showed no spatial variability. Diel isoprene concentration increased with light availability and decreased with tidal height; nighttime production was 79% lower than daytime production. Seasonal isoprene production and water concentrations were highest for the warmest months, with production strongly correlated with light (r2 = 0.800) and temperature (r2 = 0.752). Intertidal microphytobenthic communities were found to be the primary source of isoprene, with tidal action acting as a concentrating factor for isoprene entering the water column. Using these data we estimated an annual production rate for this estuary of 681 μmol m−2 y−1. This value falls at the upper end of other marine estimates and highlights the potentially significant role of estuaries as isoprene sources. The control of estuarine isoprene production by environmental processes identified here further suggests that such emissions may be altered by future environmental change.]]></description>
         <author>D. A. Exton, D. J. Suggett, M. Steinke and T. J. McGenity</author>
         <category>Global Biogeochemical Cycles</category>
         <pubDate>26</pubDate>
      </item>
      <item>
         <title>Historical land use change and associated carbon emissions in Brazil from 1940 to 1995</title>
         <link>http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2011GB004133</link>
         <description><![CDATA[The evaluation of impacts of land use change is in general limited by the knowledge of past land use conditions. Most publications on the field present only a vague description of the earlier patterns of land use, which is usually insufficient for more comprehensive studies. Here we present the first spatially explicit reconstruction of historical land use patterns in Brazil, including both croplands and pasturelands, for the period between 1940 and 1995. This reconstruction was obtained by merging satellite imagery with census data, and provides a 5′ × 5′ yearly data set of land use for three different categories (cropland, natural pastureland and planted pastureland) for Brazil. The results show that important land use changes occurred in Brazil. Natural pasture dominated in the 1950s and 1960s, but since the beginning of 1970s it has been gradually replaced by planted pasture, especially in southeast and center west of Brazil. The croplands began its expansion in the 1960s reaching extensive areas in almost all states in 1980. Carbon emissions from historical land use changes were calculated by superimposing a composite biomass map on grids of a weighted average of the fractions of the vegetation types and the replacement land uses. Net emissions from land use changes between 1940 and 1995 totaled 17.2 ± 9.0 Pg-C (90% confidence range), averaging 0.31 ± 0.16 Pg-C yr−1, but reaching up to 0.47 ± 0.25 Pg-C yr−1 during the 1960s and through 1986–1995. Despite international concerns about Amazon deforestation emissions, 72% of Brazil's carbon emissions during the period actually came from deforestation in the Atlantic Forest and Cerrado biomes. Brazil's carbon emissions from land use change are about 11 times larger than its emissions from fossil fuel burning, although only about 18.1% of the native biomass has been lost due to agricultural expansion, which is similar to the global mean (17.7%).]]></description>
         <author>Christiane Cavalcante Leite, Marcos Heil Costa, Britaldo Silveira Soares-Filho and Letícia de Barros Viana Hissa</author>
         <category>Global Biogeochemical Cycles</category>
         <pubDate>26</pubDate>
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      <item>
         <title>Decrease of dissolved oxygen after the mid-1980s in the western North Pacific subtropical gyre along the 137°E repeat section</title>
         <link>http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2011GB004227</link>
         <description><![CDATA[The Japan Meteorological Agency has acquired dissolved oxygen (DO) concentration data each year since 1967 along the 137°E repeat section in the western North Pacific. In this data set we found significant regional temporal trends of decreasing or increasing DO concentrations on various isopycnal surfaces. DO decreases were particularly significant after the mid-1980s in the subtropical gyre; mean rates of DO change at 20–25°N for 1985–2010 were −0.28 ± 0.08 μmol kg−1 yr−1 on 25.5 σθ in North Pacific Subtropical Mode Water (NPSTMW), −0.36 ± 0.08 μmol kg−1 yr−1 on 26.8 σθ in North Pacific Intermediate Water (NPIW), and −0.23 ± 0.04 μmol kg−1 yr−1 on 27.3 σθ in the O2 minimum Layer (OML). The cause of DO decrease differed among isopycnal surfaces. On density surfaces shallower than 26.0 σθ (less than about 400 m), the deepening of isopycnal surfaces and decline of oxygen solubility due to ocean warming have had the greatest influence. In particular, between 25.2 σθ and 25.8 σθ near the NPSTMW their combined contributions accounted for >50% of the DO decrease. In the NPIW core at roughly 26.8 σθ (∼700 m), the decline in DO was attributable to the DO decrease in the formation region. In the OML between 27.0 σθ and 27.3 σθ (∼1000 m), the DO decrease likely resulted from an increase in westward transport of low O2 water due to strengthening of the subtropical gyre. The result of this study shows the importance of the long-term and high-frequency along the 137°E repeat section.]]></description>
         <author>Yusuke Takatani, Daisuke Sasano, Toshiya Nakano, Takashi Midorikawa and Masao Ishii</author>
         <category>Global Biogeochemical Cycles</category>
         <pubDate>26</pubDate>
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      <item>
         <title>13C constraints on ocean carbon cycle models</title>
         <link>http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2010GB003980</link>
         <description><![CDATA[The sensitivity of oceanic δ13C fields to overturning and gas exchange is investigated in a suite of ocean general circulation models. The deep and oceanic mean δ13C in the models was sensitive to the balance between deep waters forming in the North Atlantic and the Southern Ocean. Increasing the Southern Ocean deep water formation rate to improve deep sea 14C and AOU fields was detrimental to model-data δ13C fidelity. A concurrent increase in North Atlantic Deep water would be needed to match the observed 14C and δ13C, constraining both the rate and schematics of model deep water formation, respectively, and improving sensitivity to future perturbations. Inter-basin trends in δ13C were sensitive to the rate of overturning in the models, with ‘high mixing’ model configurations matching the observations best. Models' anthropogenic δ13C changes, used as a diagnostic of model CO2 uptake, were in agreement with the observations, except at high southern latitudes (<50°S), where the model δ13C changes were greater than observed. There were predictive relationships among models' uptake of anthropogenic CO2 and depth-integrated δ13C changes. Model relationships between model anthropogenic CO2 uptake and the air-sea δ13C disequilibrium, and the sea surface δ13C, depend on preindustrial riverine fluxes of terrestrial organic carbon, and on the wind field used to drive the model circulation, respectively. Among the models tested, the relations among anthropogenic CO2 uptake and δ13C changes in the ocean are biased by the OCMIP practice of driving model momentum with one wind field, and gas exchange rates with another.]]></description>
         <author>Rolf E. Sonnerup and Paul D. Quay</author>
         <category>Global Biogeochemical Cycles</category>
         <pubDate>26</pubDate>
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