Investigating the ocean’s biological pump using thorium-235 and polonium-210
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Oceans play a critical role in the Earth’s ability to regulate atmospheric carbon dioxide, absorbing approximately one-third of all anthropogenically-emitted CO2. The biological pump is a mechanism which controls oceanic uptake of CO2 and sequestration of carbon into deeper waters. It is a complex web of processes starting with biota in the upper ocean which transform CO2 into particulate organic carbon (POC) via photosynthesis, a portion of which is ultimately sequestered from the atmosphere. Due to the massive scale of these processes, small changes in the strength of the biological pump can greatly impact atmospheric CO2 levels. Tools used to quantify the flux of biologically relevant elements such as POC and biogenic silica via the biological pump are radioisotopes – naturally-occurring clocks which allow us to look back in time to study oceanic processes. In this thesis, the two radioisotope pairs 234Th/238U and 210Po/210Pb are utilized. Chapter 2 is an update of the 234Th/238U measurement method which simplifies the protocol, and allows for expansion of use. Chapter 3 presents an unprecedentedly extensive, non-steady state study of 234Th/238U to assess POC and biogenic silica flux through NASA’s EXPORTS project. The study involved tracking an eddy for one month in the North Atlantic Ocean to quantify export over the development of a dual-phase plankton spring bloom. In Chapter 4, this study is expanded to add a non-steady state application of the 210Po/210Pb tracer to look farther back in the history of POC and biogenic silica export. Extensive comparison of the two tracer systems results in new-to-the-field conclusions about the concurrent use of tracers. This thesis culminates in Chapter 5, which compares three 234Th/238U studies with community structure data to make inferences about POC export as it relates to who is present in the ecosystem. The EXPORTS North Atlantic dataset is a “strong” export endmember, WHOI’s Ocean Twilight Zone (OTZ) project offers an “intermediate” export case in the Northwest Atlantic Slope, and the EXPORTS North Pacific study is a “weak” export endmember. Taken together, this thesis greatly expands the use of 234Th/238U and 210Po/210Pb tracers to investigate the biological pump in diverse environments.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".