<sup>238</sup>U/<sup>235</sup>U isotope ratios of crustal material, rivers and products of hydrothermal alteration: new insights on the oceanic U isotope mass balance
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In this study, the U isotope composition, n((238)U)/n((235)U), of major components of the upper continental crust, including granitic rocks of different age and post-Archaean shales, as well as that of rivers (the major U source to the oceans) was investigated. Furthermore, U isotope fractionation during the removal of U at mid-ocean ridges, an important sink for U from the oceans, was investigated by the analyses of hydrothermal water samples (including low- and high-temperature fluids), low-temperature altered basalts and calcium carbonate veins. All analysed rock samples from the continental crust fall into a limited range of δ(238)U between -0.45 and -0.21 ‰ (relative to NBL CRM 112-A), with an average of -0.30 ± 0.15 ‰ (2 SD, N = 11). Despite differences in catchment lithologies, all major rivers define a relatively narrow range between -0.31 and -0.13 ‰, with a weighted mean isotope composition of -0.27 ‰, which is indistinguishable from the estimate for the upper continental crust (-0.30 ‰). Only some tributary rivers from the Swiss Alps display a slightly larger range in δ(238)U (-0.29 to +0.01 ‰) and lower U concentrations (0.87-3.08 nmol/kg) compared to the investigated major rivers (5.19-11.69 nmol/kg). These findings indicate that only minor net U isotope fractionation occurs during weathering and transport of material from the continental crust to the oceans. Altered basalts display moderately enriched U concentrations (by a factor of 3-18) compared to those typically observed for normal mid-ocean ridge basalts. These, and carbonate veins within altered basalts, show large U isotope fractionation towards both heavy and light U isotope compositions (ranging from -0.63 to +0.27 ‰). Hydrothermal water samples display low U concentrations (0.3-1 nmol/kg) and only limited variations in their U isotope composition (-0.43 ± 0.25 ‰) around the seawater value. Nevertheless, two of the investigated fluids display significantly lower δ(238)U (-0.55 and -0.59 ‰) than seawater (-0.38 ‰). These findings, together with the heavier U isotope composition observed for some altered basalts and carbonate veins support a model, in which redox processes mostly drive U isotope fractionation. This may result in a slightly heavier U isotope composition of U that is removed from seawater during hydrothermal seafloor alteration compared to that of seawater. Using the estimated isotope compositions of rivers and all U sinks from the ocean (of this study and the literature) for modelling of the isotopic U mass balance, this gives reasonable results for recent estimates of the oceanic U budget. It furthermore provides additional constraints on the relative size of the diverse U sinks and respective net isotope fractionation during U removal.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| 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 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| 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 teacher head, 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".