NOAA/WDS Paleoclimatology - Global Ocean Seafloor Sediment Geochemistry Data during the past 12,000 years

Quantitative knowledge about the burial of sedimentary components at the seafloor has wide-ranging implications in ocean science, from global climate to continental weathering. The use of 230Th-normalized fluxes reduces uncertainties that many prior studies faced by accounting for the effects of sediment redistribution by bottom currents and minimizing the impact of age model uncertainty. Here we employ a recently compiled global dataset of 230Th-normalized fluxes with an updated database of seafloor surface sediment composition to derive global maps of the burial flux of calcium carbonate, biogenic opal, total organic carbon (TOC), non-biogenic material, iron, mercury, and excess barium (Ba xs). The spatial patterns of burial of the major components are consistent with prior work, but the new quantitative estimates allow evaluations of global elemental budgets, refining prior assessments. Sedimentary Fe fluxes are largely consistent with the bulk non-biogenic burial flux, except in coastal settings or locations with significant hydrothermal inputs. The fluxes of some commonly used paleo-productivity proxies (TOC, biogenic opal, and Ba xs) do not demonstrate spatially-significant relationships with satellite-based productivity estimates Our new compilation of sedimentary fluxes provides more detailed information on burial fluxes, which should lead to substantial improvements in the understanding of how preservation affects these paleoproxies.