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Notable changes in the Arctic ecosystem driven by increased atmospheric temperature and ice cover reduction were observed in the last decades. Ongoing environmental shifts affect freshwater discharge to the Arctic Ocean, and alter Arctic land-ocean fluxes. The monitoring of DOC distribution and CDOM optical properties is of great interest both from the point of view of validation of remote sensing models, and for studying organic carbon transformation and dynamics. In this study we report the DOC concentrations and CDOM optical characteristics in the mixing zones of the Ob, Yenisei, Khatanga, Lena, Kolyma, and Indigirka rivers. Water sampling was performed in August–October 2015 and 2017. The DOC was determined by high-temperature combustion, and absorption coefficients and spectroscopic indices were calculated using the seawater absorbance obtained with spectrophotometric measurements. Kara and Laptev mixing zones were characterized by conservative DOC behavior, while the East Siberian sea waters showed nonconservative DOC distribution. Dominant DOM sources are discussed. The absorption coefficient aCDOM (350) in the East Siberian Sea was two-fold lower compared to Kara and Laptev seawaters. For the first time we report the DOC content in the Khatanga River of 802.6 µM based on the DOC in the Khatanga estuary.

The focus of this study is organic matter changes and suspended particle and colloid behavior in riverine and marine water mixing zones. Laboratory experiments demonstrated that salinity, clay mineral type, and the nature of dissolved organic matter (DOM) have a strong influence on mineral suspension stabilities (clays, carbonates, and ferric hydroxide), which represent the main fractions of particulate and colloidal matter riverine export. Clay mineral modification by humic acids stabilizes suspensions under increasing salinity, resulting in greater export of particles to coastal zones. Simultaneously, modified particles are more efficiently aggregated by a flocculant than nonmodified particles. Field investigations were conducted in Arctic river mixing zones, providing new information about colloid matter and colloid organic carbon distributions in the mixing zones, which agreed well with laboratory studies. The ratio between colloid organic carbon and suspended matter may prove a useful criterion to distinguish effective flocculation zones. Arctic River DOM fluorescence suggests dominance of terrigenous humic substances in mixing zones as well as coprecipitation by coagulation and flocculation. Our findings may reconcile reports of nonconservative behavior of DOM previously reported in the mixing zone at salinities of less than 12. We suggest that there is a flocculation mechanism in the estuarine mixing zone, which implies the presence of natural active substances, released during microorganism viral lysis (viral shunting).

In freshwater and marine ecosystems, the phytoplankton community is based on microalgae and cyanobacteria, which include phylogenetically very diverse groups of oxygenic photoautotrophs. In the process of evolution, they developed a wide range of bio(geo)chemical adaptations that allow them to effectively use solar radiation, CO2, and nutrients, as well as major and trace elements, to form O2 and organic compounds with a high chemical bond energy. The inclusion of chemical elements in the key processes of energy and plastic metabolism in the cell is determined by redox conditions and the abundance and metabolic availability of elements in the paleoenvironment. Geochemical evolution, which proceeded simultaneously with the evolution of biosystems, contributed to an increase in the number of metals and trace elements acting as cofactors of enzymes involved in metabolism and maintaining homeostasis in the first photoautotrophs. The diversity of metal-containing enzymes and the adaptive ability to replace one element with another without losing the functional properties of enzymes ensured the high ecological plasticity of species and allowed microalgae and cyanobacteria to successfully colonize a wide variety of habitats. In this review, we consider the main aspects of the modern concepts of the biogeochemical evolution of aquatic ecosystems and the role of some metals in the main bioenergetic processes in photosynthetic prokaryotes and eukaryotes. We present generalized data on the efficiency of the assimilation of key nutrients by phytoplankton and their importance in the cycle of carbon, silicon, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, and iron. This article presents modern views on the evolutionary prerequisites for the formation of elemental signatures in different systematic groups of microalgae, as well as the possibility of using the stoichiometric ratio in the study of biological and geochemical processes in aquatic ecosystems.

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