Proxies for paleo-oxygenation: a downcore comparison between benthic foraminiferal surface porosity and I/Ca

DOI

Benthic foraminiferal surface porosity (the mean percentage of surface area covered by pores; higher porosity: lower oxygenation) and iodine to calcium ratio (I/Ca, higher I/Ca: higher oxygenation) are both promising paleoceanographic proxies that will advance through testing in down-core studies. Here we report the first down-core comparison (~45 kyr) of these proxies for a core from the southern Brazilian margin (26°40.22′ S, 46°26.46′ W, 475 m water depth). Both proxies are most sensitive to low-O~2~ conditions (< 50 µmol/kg), and not well-constrained at higher O~2~ concentrations. Porosity values are generally low (< 15%) and I/Ca ranges between ~4 and ~6 µmol/mol throughout the core. The two proxies are overall consistent, suggesting that bottom-water oxygen concentrations at the site remained above 50 µmol/kg during the last 45 kyr. Several non-O~2~ factors (e.g., iodate reduction rates, water mass mixing, temperature, foraminiferal shell robustness) could influence the proxies and require further investigation.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.914577
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.1016/j.palaeo.2021.110588
Metadata Access https://ws.pangaea.de/oai/provider?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=datacite4&identifier=oai:pangaea.de:doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.914577
Provenance
Creator Lu, Wanyi (ORCID: 0000-0002-2837-654X); Barbosa, Catia F (ORCID: 0000-0002-7973-460X); Rathburn, Anthony E ORCID logo; Xavier, Priscila da Matta; Cruz, Anna P S ORCID logo; Thomas, Ellen ORCID logo; Rickaby, Rosalind E M ORCID logo; Zhang, Yi Ge ORCID logo; Lu, Zunli ORCID logo
Publisher PANGAEA
Publication Year 2020
Rights Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
OpenAccess true
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Format text/tab-separated-values
Size 336 data points
Discipline Earth System Research
Spatial Coverage (-46.441 LON, -26.670 LAT)