Abstract
Carbon to nitrogen ratios have been extensively employed by ecologists, biogeochemists and geologists as an indicator of the source, the nutritional value and the degree of biological and diagenetic alteration of organic matter. They were the most common chemical method of characterizing organic matter before the use of stable carbon isotope and pyrolysis methods became widely available, and are still widely utilized today. The use of C/N ratios is based on two basic premises: first that the nutritional value of organic matter is positively correlated with bulk nitrogen content, and second, that phytoplankton-derived organic matter has a significantly higher bulk nitrogen content than terrestrial organic matter.
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