The biological pump is the ocean's biologically driven sequestration of carbon from the atmosphere and land runoff to the ocean interior and seafloor sediments. In other words, it is a biologically me
The pelagic food web, showing the central involvement of marine microorganisms in how the ocean imports carbon and then exports it back to the atmosphere and ocean floor
Pump processes vary with depthPhotic zone: 0–100 m; Mesopelagic: 100–1000 m; Bathypelagic: 1000 to abyssal depths. Below 1000 m depth carbon is considered removed from the atmosphere for at least 100 years. Scavenging: DOC incorporation within sinking particles.
Particulate inorganic carbon budget for Hudson Bay Black arrows represent DIC produced by PIC dissolution. Grey lines represent terrestrial PIC. Units are Tg C y−1
The coccolithophore Emiliania huxleyi (µm = thousandth of one mm)
Particulate organic matter is a fraction of total organic matter operationally defined as that which does not pass through a filter pore size that typically ranges in size from 0.053 millimeters to 2
Marine particulate organic carbon (POC) POC includes components of living cells as well as dead material (detritus), and originates from both allochthonous and autochthonous sources. The POC pool can also exchange material with the dissolved OC (DOC) pool through aggregation and disaggregation of particles. This process and others may be involved in the formation of the molecularly uncharacterized component (MUC), which may incorporate both autochthonous and allochthonous OC.
Mean annual POC export at 100 m across the Southern Ocean