Featured L&O E‐Lecture: An Introduction to Marine Sediments with an Emphasis on Sediment Organic Matter Remineralization

Abstract

The geochemistry of marine sediments is controlled by both the composition of the material initially deposited in the sediments and the chemical, biological, or physical processes that affect this material after its deposition. These processes fall within the general category of what is commonly referred to as early diagenesis. One key aspect of the study of early diagenesis in marine sediments is that the oxidation, or remineralization, of sediment organic matter is either the direct or indirect causative agent for many early diagenetic changes. Given the pivotal role that organic matter remineralization plays in early diagenetic processes, significant efforts have gone into understanding and quantifying these processes. This lecture provides a brief introduction to marine sediment geochemistry, focusing on the basic controls of organic matter remineralization in sediments. I believe that the lecture could be useful in an undergraduate class in general oceanography, low temperature geochemistry or environmental geochemistry. It could also be useful in introductory graduate classes in these latter two areas. David J. Burdige is a professor and eminent scholar in the Department of Ocean, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Old Dominion University, where he has been a faculty member since 1985. He received a B.A. (with Honors) in Chemistry from Swarthmore College and a Ph.D. in Oceanography from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego. He was a post-doctoral scholar in the marine sciences program at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, before joining the faculty at ODU. His research interests are broadly in chemical oceanography/marine biogeochemistry, and he has spent much of his career studying biogeochemical processes in marine and estuarine sediments and their resulting effects on the cycling of carbon, nitrogen, and trace metals such as iron, manganese and copper. In 2006, he authored the book Geochemistry of Marine Sediments (Princeton Univ. Press). In addition to his research efforts, he teaches graduate classes in chemical oceanography and marine sediment geochemistry, and graduate and undergraduate classes in earth system science. He also recently began teaching a course for non-science majors more specifically focused on modern global climate change.