Table of Contents

• Coverage
• Dataset Description
  • Methods & Sampling
  • Data Processing Description
• Data Files
• Supplemental Files
• Related Publications
• Parameters
• Instruments
• Deployments
• Project Information
• Program Information
• Funding

Concentrations and stable isotope ratios of Fe, Zn, and Cd from the US GEOTRACES Arctic cruise GN01 (HLY1502) from August to October 2015. A subset of these data has been published in Zhang et al., 2019.

Seawater dissolved samples were taken from the US GEOTRACES trace-metal clean rosette, or underway towfish system. 

Methods for Fe, Zn, and Cd stable isotope and concentration analyses have been described in detail in previous manuscripts (Conway et al., 2016, 2013; Conway & John, 2014a, 2014b; T.M. Conway & John, 2015; Tim M Conway & John, 2015; John et al., 2018a, 2018b)). Briefly:

Concentration measurements were made using an offline adaptation of the seaFAST-pico metal extraction system (Elemental Scientific Inc.) as described in Lagerstrom et al. (2013). Briefly, using the seaFAST, 10 mL aliquots of seawater were extracted onto Nobias PA1 chelating resin at pH ~ 6.5 with an ammonium acetate/acetic acid buffer, then eluted in 10% v/v nitric acid (HNO3). Metal concentrations were measured on a Thermo Fisher Element 2 HR-ICP-MS.

Fe, Zn, Cd, Ni, Cu, and Pb concentrations were measured by isotope dilution. Recoveries for Ni were used to adjust the final concentrations of Mn and REEs.

The accuracy of our analytical procedure was verified by analysis of a seawater reference material (GEOTRACES 2008 GS), for which good agreement with the reported consensus values were obtained.

Quality Control and Intercalibration: refer to the Intercalibration Report Supplemental Document (PDF).

Data quality flags:
SeaDataNet data quality flags have been assigned to these data. More information is available from GEOTRACES at http://www.geotraces.org/library-88/geotraces-policies/1577-geotraces-quality-flag-policy and from SeaDataNet at https://www.seadatanet.org/Standards/Data-Quality-Control. In summary:
0 = no quality control
1 = good value
2 = probably good value
3 = probably bad value
4 = bad value
5 = changed value
6 = value below detection (BDL)
7 = value in excess
8 = interpolated value
9 = missing value

BCO-DMO Processing:
- changed #N/A and #VALUE! to nd ("no data");
- added start and end ISO 8601 date/time fields;
- changed date/time of 9/13/2015 24:00 to 9/14/2015 00:00.

Description from NSF award abstract:
In pursuit of its goal "to identify processes and quantify fluxes that control the distributions of key trace elements and isotopes in the ocean, and to establish the sensitivity of these distributions to changing environmental conditions", in 2015 the International GEOTRACES Program will embark on several years of research in the Arctic Ocean. In a region where climate warming and general environmental change are occurring at amazing speed, research such as this is important for understanding the current state of Arctic Ocean geochemistry and for developing predictive capability as the regional ecosystem continues to warm and influence global oceanic and climatic conditions. The three investigators funded on this award, will manage a large team of U.S.scientists who will compete through the regular NSF proposal process to contribute their own unique expertise in marine trace metal, isotopic, and carbon cycle geochemistry to the U.S. effort. The three managers will be responsible for arranging and overseeing at-sea technical services such as hydrographic measurements, nutrient analyses, and around-the-clock management of on-deck sampling activites upon which all participants depend, and for organizing all pre- and post-cruise technical support and scientific meetings. The management team will also lead educational outreach activities for the general public in Nome and Barrow, Alaska, to explain the significance of the study to these communities and to learn from residents' insights on observed changes in the marine system. The project itself will provide for the support and training of a number of pre-doctoral students and post-doctoral researchers. Inasmuch as the Arctic Ocean is an epicenter of global climate change, findings of this study are expected to advance present capability to forecast changes in regional and globlal ecosystem and climate system functioning.

As the United States' contribution to the International GEOTRACES Arctic Ocean initiative, this project will be part of an ongoing multi-national effort to further scientific knowledge about trace elements and isotopes in the world ocean. This U.S. expedition will focus on the western Arctic Ocean in the boreal summer of 2015. The scientific team will consist of the management team funded through this award plus a team of scientists from U.S. academic institutions who will have successfully competed for and received NSF funds for specific science projects in time to participate in the final stages of cruise planning. The cruise track segments will include the Bering Strait, Chukchi shelf, and the deep Canada Basin. Several stations will be designated as so-called super stations for intense study of atmospheric aerosols, sea ice, and sediment chemistry as well as water-column processes. In total, the set of coordinated international expeditions will involve the deployment of ice-capable research ships from 6 nations (US, Canada, Germany, Sweden, UK, and Russia) across different parts of the Arctic Ocean, and application of state-of-the-art methods to unravel the complex dynamics of trace metals and isotopes that are important as oceanographic and biogeochemical tracers in the sea.

NSF Award Abstract:
In this project, a group of investigators participating in the 2015 U.S.GEOTRACES Arctic expedition will study the chemistry and regional distribution of seven trace metals in the Arctic Ocean: iron, manganese, zinc, cadmium, copper, nickel, and cobalt. These so-called bioactive metals are of special scientific interest because of their role in multiple biogeochemical processes including biological production of the sea and the planetary cycling of carbon and nitrogen. Like other multinational initiatives in the International GEOTRACES Program, the goals of the U.S. Arctic expedition are to identify processes and quantify fluxes that control the distributions of key trace elements and isotopes in the ocean, and to establish the sensitivity of these distributions to changing environmental conditions. This study in particular would contribute to our understanding of the sources and sinks of these seven bioactive metals as well as examine their interaction with biological processes. The project will focus on two major overarching research questions: (1) What are the sources and sinks for micronutrients and macronutrients in the Arctic? And (2) How does bioactive trace element nutrition influence productivity and species composition in the Arctic, and conversely, how do biological processes influence the cycling of these metals? In terms of broader impacts, the PIs on this project will be actively involved in educational outreach efforts, and the research team itself will include two postdoctoral researchers and a graduate student. The team leaders also plan to publish a children's ocean education book based on the expedition with the aim of generating next-generation excitement about modern ocean science

With regard to technical specifics, the research team will measure the dissolved seawater phases of the bioactive metals Fe, Mn, Zn, Cd, Cu, Ni, and Co, the dissolved stable metal isotopes 56Fe, 66Zn, and 114Cd, and the chemical speciation of Co. The recent development of methods for multi-element and multi-isotope analysis methods, in conjunction with the high-resolution sampling of the GEOTRACES program, make it possible to efficiently produce this dense dataset of metals and metal isotopes. This will be a team-based approach to achieve comprehensive duplication for analysis of the key parameters of dissolved metal concentrations. Each investigator will further conduct specialized additional measurements of metal isotopes and dissolved Co (which has unique analytical challenges) and Co speciation. Interpretation of these rich datasets would will be directed toward determination of sources and sinks as well as their ecological stoichiometry, in collaboration with other U.S.GEOTRACES participants measuring synergistic parameters. Together, this Arctic Ocean bioactive trace metal dataset is expected to provide an important contribution to the understanding of micronutrient roles in Arctic biogeochemical processes. These results should also be highly relevant to research studies of the ancient ocean, in which trace-metal analyses are commonly used to trace a wide variety of processes including paleo-ocean circulation and biological productivity. Finally, understanding the sources and sinks for elements in the modern ocean is key to predicting how the concentrations of bioactive elements might vary in a changing future climate.

GEOTRACES is a SCOR sponsored program; and funding for program infrastructure development is provided by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

GEOTRACES gained momentum following a special symposium, S02: Biogeochemical cycling of trace elements and isotopes in the ocean and applications to constrain contemporary marine processes (GEOSECS II), at a 2003 Goldschmidt meeting convened in Japan. The GEOSECS II acronym referred to the Geochemical Ocean Section Studies To determine full water column distributions of selected trace elements and isotopes, including their concentration, chemical speciation, and physical form, along a sufficient number of sections in each ocean basin to establish the principal relationships between these distributions and with more traditional hydrographic parameters;

* To evaluate the sources, sinks, and internal cycling of these species and thereby characterize more completely the physical, chemical and biological processes regulating their distributions, and the sensitivity of these processes to global change; and

* To understand the processes that control the concentrations of geochemical species used for proxies of the past environment, both in the water column and in the substrates that reflect the water column.

GEOTRACES will be global in scope, consisting of ocean sections complemented by regional process studies. Sections and process studies will combine fieldwork, laboratory experiments and modelling. Beyond realizing the scientific objectives identified above, a natural outcome of this work will be to build a community of marine scientists who understand the processes regulating trace element cycles sufficiently well to exploit this knowledge reliably in future interdisciplinary studies.

Expand "Projects" below for information about and data resulting from individual US GEOTRACES research projects.