Articles | Volume 16, issue 19
https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-16-3793-2019
https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-16-3793-2019
Ideas and perspectives
 | 
02 Oct 2019
Ideas and perspectives |  | 02 Oct 2019

Ideas and perspectives: Is dark carbon fixation relevant for oceanic primary production estimates?

Federico Baltar and Gerhard J. Herndl

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Cited articles

ALOHA: Time series biogeochemical data, available at: http://hahana.soest.hawaii.edu/hot, last access: 14 February 2019. 
Alonso-Sáez, L., Galand, P. E., Casamayor, E. O., Pedrós-Alió, C., and Bertilsson, S.: High bicarbonate assimilation in the dark by Arctic bacteria, ISME J., 4, 1581–1590, 2010. 
Altabet, M.: Variations in nitrogen isotopic composition between sinking and suspended particles: Implications for nitrogen cycling and particle transformation in the open ocean, Deep-Sea Res. Pt. A, 35, 535–554, 1988. 
Baltar, F., Arístegui, J., Gasol, J. M., Sintes, E., and Herndl, G. J.: Evidence of prokaryotic metabolism on suspended particulate organic matter in the dark waters of the subtropical North Atlantic, Limnol. Oceanogr., 54, 182–193, 2009. 
Baltar, F., Arístegui, J., Sintes, E., Gasol, J. M., Reinthaler, T., and Herndl, G. J.: Significance of non-sinking particulate organic carbon and dark CO2 fixation to heterotrophic carbon demand in the mesopelagic northeast Atlantic, Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, L09602, https://doi.org/10.1029/2010GL043105, 2010. 
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Around half of the global primary production (PP) is produced in the ocean. Here we quantified how much oceanic PP estimates would increase if we included the dark DIC fixation rates (which are usually excluded in the carbon-14 method) into the PP estimation. We found that the inclusion of dark DIC fixation would increase PP estimates by 5–22 %. This represents ca. 1.2 to 11 Pg C yr−1 of newly synthesized organic carbon available for the marine food web.
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