2023 Volume 57 Issue 2 Pages 35-54
Recently, the biogeochemical cycles of trace elements and their isotopes (TEIs) in the ocean have been investigated intensively. The main driver of this rapid improvement is GEOTRACES project (An international study of the marine biogeochemical cycles of trace elements and their isotopes). The development and implementation of clean technique and advances in analytical chemistry made it possible to reveal TEIs distributions precisely and give us new insights about the processes controlling TEIs in the ocean. In this review, we give an overview of recent findings in GEOTRACES by focusing on three main themes, (1) fluxes and processes at ocean interfaces, (2) internal cycling of TEIs and (3) development of proxies for past change. We also introduce the recent achievements by GEOTRACES-Japan in which Japanese marine geochemistry community has been actively involved. The project is still on the halfway, but the findings have certainly deepened our understanding of marine biogeochemical cycles of TEIs.
