Widespread functional anoxia in the oxygen minimum zone of the Eastern South Pacific

By B. Thamdrup, T. Dalsgaard, Niels Peter Revsbech. 2012

231 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Oxygen minimum zones (OMZs) as found in the Eastern Pacific and Indian Ocean are biogeochemical hot spots with a disproportionately large role in the marine nitrogen cycle, and they are important components of the highly productive ecosystems in which they occur. Although the oxygen-depleted waters have been known for a century, oxygen levels inside them are not well constrained and the regulation of their anaerobic processes by oxygen is poorly understood. We deployed highly sensitive STOX oxygen sensors with a detection limit of 10 nmol kg−1 in combination with conventional hydrographic oxygen sensors along a cruise track transecting the Eastern South Pacific OMZ from South to North along the coast of Chile and Peru. Oxygen was below the detection limit throughout the ∼200 m thick OMZ core in most casts with STOX sensors. The only exception was an offshore location off Peru where oxygen was 10–50 nmol kg−1 in the core, likely as the result of a transient intrusion. Oxygen was also not detected in the OMZ core in further casts with conventional sensors, which had a detection limit of 90 nmol kg−1 after STOX-based zero calibration. Our measurements tighten the constraints on typical oxygen concentrations in the inner part of the OMZ by at least an order of magnitude relative to previous reports. Nitrite only accumulated when oxygen was depleted below 50 nmol kg−1, which indicates that nitrogen cycling is much more sensitive to oxygen than previously estimated. We argue that extreme oxygen depletion to low nanomalar or even picomolar concentrations is a normal condition in the South Pacific OMZ, and suggest that the OMZ core is in fact functionally anoxic over wide regions for extended periods. Our results further indicate that oxygen dynamics in the low nanomolar range play an important role in OMZ biogeochemistry.

Subfields: Oceanography

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e46822268dee870801f66cd2cbdb847470ecafa0

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In Oceanography

1. B. Thamdrup
2. Niels Peter Revsbech
3. T. Dalsgaard
4. L. Farías
5. D. Canfield
6. Bess Ward
7. C. Robinson
8. J. Kuenen

Citations in the corpus

• Anammox and denitrification in the oxygen minimum zone of the eastern South Pacific (2012, methodology): “Also the distributions of oxygen and nitrite were similar to earlier reports (Thamdrup et al. 2012).”
• Zooplankton in the eastern tropical north Pacific: Boundary effects of oxygen minimum zone expansion (2013, unknown): “Furthermore, precise measurement of small differences of in situ oxygen concentration at the very low oxygen levels and millimeter spatial scales occupied by individual zooplankters remains challenging (Thamdrup et al., 2012).”
• Oxygen distribution and aerobic respiration in the north and south eastern tropical Pacific oxygen minimum zones (2014, background): “1–3), off Dichato, was analyzed at the end of the austral summer when the seasonal OMZ, which is an extension of the permanent ETSP OMZ, was still present.”