Ocean ecosystems play a critical role in the Earth's carbon cycle and the quantification of their impacts for both present conditions and for predictions into the future remains one of the greatest challenges in oceanography. The goal of the EXport Processes in the Ocean from Remote Sensing (EXPORTS) Science Plan is to develop a predictive understanding of the export and fate of global ocean net primary production (NPP) and its implications for present and future climates. The achievement of this goal requires a quantification of the mechanisms that control the export of carbon from the euphotic zone as well as its fate in the underlying "twilight zone" where some fraction of exported carbon will be sequestered in the ocean's interior on time scales of months to millennia. Here we present a measurement/synthesis/modeling framework aimed at quantifying the fates of upper ocean NPP and its impacts on the global carbon cycle based upon the EXPORTS Science Plan. The proposed approach will diagnose relationships among the ecological, biogeochemical, and physical oceanographic processes that control carbon cycling across a range of ecosystem and carbon cycling states leading to advances in satellite diagnostic and numerical prognostic models. To collect these data, a combination of ship and robotic field sampling, satellite remote sensing, and numerical modeling is proposed which enables the sampling of the many pathways of NPP export and fates. This coordinated, process-oriented approach has the potential to foster new insights on ocean carbon cycling that maximizes its societal relevance through the achievement of research goals of many international research agencies and will be a key step toward our understanding of the Earth as an integrated system.

The events that followed the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, included the loss of power and overheating at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plants, which led to extensive releases of radioactive gases, volatiles, and liquids, particularly to the coastal ocean. The fate of these radionuclides depends in large part on their oceanic geochemistry, physical processes, and biological uptake. Whereas radioactivity on land can be resampled and its distribution mapped, releases to the marine environment are harder to characterize owing to variability in ocean currents and the general challenges of sampling at sea. Five years later, it is appropriate to review what happened in terms of the sources, transport, and fate of these radionuclides in the ocean. In addition to the oceanic behavior of these contaminants, this review considers the potential health effects and societal impacts.

Total particulate phosphorus (TPP), particulate inorganic P (PIP), and particulate organic P (POP) concentrations were measured in a year-long series of sediment trap samples collected throughout the oxic-anoxic water column (275 m, 455 m, 930 m, and 1,255 (PON). The lack of a relationship between POC and PIP fluxes and the large fraction of TPP associated with the PIP pool in both oxic and anoxic traps suggests that future analyses must separate PIP and POP when evaluating biological relationships between C, N, and P. The strong relationships between POC, PON, and POP also suggest that POP is not preferentially remineralized relative to PON and POC with increasing depth in this anoxic environment. P composition was also determined using solid state 31 P nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), and it was found that phosphonates, chemically and thermally inert compounds, are a significant fraction of the TPP pool. Furthermore, these compounds were preferentially removed relative to more bioavailable P esters during a low flux event. Their selective removal suggests that these compounds may be an unrecognized source of bioavailable P under anoxic conditions.

Planktonic foraminiferal calcification intensity, reflected by shell wall thickness, has been hypothesized to covary with the carbonate chemistry of seawater. Here we use both sediment trap and box core samples from the Santa Barbara Basin to evaluate the relationship between the calcification intensity of the planktonic foraminifera species Globigerina bulloides, measured by area density (µg/µm2), and the carbonate ion concentration of seawater ([CO32−]). We also evaluate the influence of both temperature and nutrient concentration ([PO43−]) on foraminiferal calcification and growth. The presence of two G. bulloides morphospecies with systematically different calcification properties and offset stable isotopic compositions was identified within sampling populations using distinguishing morphometric characteristics. The calcification temperature and by extension calcification depth of the more abundant “normal” G. bulloides morphospecies was determined using δ18O temperature estimates. Calcification depths vary seasonally with upwelling and were used to select the appropriate [CO32−], temperature, and [PO43−] depth measurements for comparison with area density. Seasonal upwelling in the study region also results in collinearity between independent variables complicating a straightforward statistical analysis. To address this issue, we use additional statistical diagnostics and a down core record to disentangle the respective roles of each parameter on G. bulloides calcification. Our results indicate that [CO32−] is the primary variable controlling calcification intensity while temperature influences shell size. We report a modern calibration for the normal G. bulloides morphospecies that can be used in down core studies of well‐preserved sediments to estimate past [CO32−].

We constructed a simple non-steady-state model of trophic cycling relationships in the California Current Ecosystem and tested its predictions of mesozooplankton fecal-pellet export against vertical carbon-flux measurements by the 234 Th method taken during Lagrangian experiments. To assess trophic relationships, we simultaneously measured 14 C-primary production and chlorophyll-based rate estimates of phytoplankton growth, microzooplankton grazing, mesozooplankton grazing, and net phytoplankton growth. Study locations ranged from coastal upwelling to offshore oligotrophic conditions. E-ratios (carbon export : 14 C-primary production) predicted by the model ranged from 0.08 to 0.14, in good agreement with both the magnitude and the variability found in contemporaneous measurements of 234 Th export and C : 234 Th-ratios of sinking particles. E-ratios were strongly decoupled from new production estimates. The lowest measured and predicted e-ratios were associated with higher nutrient chlorophyll parcels with net accumulating phytoplankton in the inshore region. For our study sites, variability in export efficiency was determined by the local net balance of growth and grazing and the relative strengths of grazing pathways to microzooplankton and mesozooplankton. Despite very different plankton assemblages studied, the consistently good agreement between independently measured productiongrazing processes and biogeochemical rates suggest that zooplankton are the major drivers of vertical carbon-flux in this system during springtime.