The Xiamen Symposium on Marine Environmental Sciences (XMAS 2025)

1413 / 2024-09-26 22:50:52

Jigsaw puzzle of the interwoven biologically-driven ocean carbon pumps

biologically-driven ocean carbon pumps, biological, carbonate, microbial, bio-pumps

I recently proposed (Legendre, 2024, Progress in Oceanography) to combine the three biologically-driven ocean carbon pumps (biological, carbonate and microbial) under the generic name of “biologically-driven ocean carbon pumps”, in short, “bio-pumps”. I summarized the interactions among these three interwoven carbon pumps in the bio-pump jigsaw puzzle. I showed that sequestration fluxes from all three bio-pumps can occur throughout the water column, albeit in different forms, and I used this “continuous vertical sequestration” concept to propose a target framework to simplify the research on bio-pumps, and unify the studies carried out by researchers from different disciplines. I also analyzed the functioning of the bio-pumps and their carbon sequestration processes, leading to a synthetic description of the processes involved in the three bio-pumps and their carbon sequestration, and I proposed to unify research on the interwoven bio-pumps. In this presentation, I examine in more detail the implementation of the bio-pump approach.