The iron(II) oxidation
kinetic process was studied at 25 stations
in coastal seawater of the Macaronesia region (9 around Cape Verde,
11 around the Canary Islands, and 5 around Madeira). In a physicochemical
context, experiments were carried out to study the pseudo-first-order
oxidation rate constant (k′, min–1) over a range of pH (7.8, 7.9, 8.0, and 8.1) and temperature (10,
15, 20, and 25 °C). Deviations from the calculated k
cal
′ at the same T, pH, and S were observed for most of the stations.
The measured t
1/2 (ln 2/k′, min) values at the 25 stations ranged from 1.82 to 3.47
min (mean 1.93 ± 0.76 min) and for all but two stations were
lower than the calculated t
1/2 of 3.21
± 0.2 min. In a biogeochemical context, nutrients and variables
associated with the organic matter spectral properties (CDOM and FDOM)
were analyzed to explain the observed deviations. The application
of a multilinear regression model indicated that k′ can be described (R = 0.921 and SEE = 0.064
for pH = 8 and T = 25 °C) from a linear combination
of three organic variables, k′OM = k
cal
′ −0.11* TDN + 29.9*b
DOM + 33.4*C1humic, where TDN is the total dissolved nitrogen, b
DOM is the spectral peak obtained from colored
dissolved organic matter (DOM) analysis when protein-like or tyrosine-like
components are present, and C1humic is the component associated
with humic-like compounds obtained from the parallel factor analysis
of the fluorescent DOM. Results show that compounds with N in their
structures mainly explain the observed k′
increase for most of the samples, although other components could
also play a relevant role. Experimentally, k′
provides the net result between the compounds that accelerate the
process and those that slow it down.