Rates of sulfate and methane turnover in sediments collected in the Campeche Hydrocarbon Province in the Southern Gulf of Mexico in 2015

In the Campeche Hydrocarbon province in the southern Gulf of Mexico, large areas of the seafloor are rich in natural gas and highly viscous crude oil. To understand the influence of these hydrocarbons on porewater geochemistry, we cored sediments from specific sites by gravity coring, multicoring and push coring during Meteor Expedition M114-2 in March 2015.To retrieve rates of sulfate reduction and methane oxidation, onboard we incubated select sediment samples with 35S-Sulfate and 14C-methane radiotracers and analyzed the formation of radiolabeled inorganic reduced sulfur and inorganic carbon.

墨西哥湾南部坎佩切烃类省（Campeche Hydrocarbon province）的海底大面积区域赋存丰富的天然气与高粘度原油。为厘清此类烃类对孔隙水地球化学（porewater geochemistry）的影响，研究团队在2015年3月执行的“流星号”（Meteor）科考航次M114-2中，采用重力取心（gravity coring）、多管取心（multicoring）与推入式取心（push coring）三种取心方式，于特定站位获取了沉积物岩芯。为测定硫酸盐还原与甲烷氧化速率，研究团队在船载实验平台中，利用放射性示踪剂（radiotracers）35S-硫酸盐（35S-Sulfate）与14C-甲烷（14C-methane）对筛选后的沉积物样品进行培养，并分析了放射性标记的无机还原态硫与无机碳的生成量。