A Natural Regularity on the Distribution of Chemical Elements in the Biosphere

Abstract

A systematic study of 44 elements in various Japanese seaweeds was carried out by chemical and neutron activation analyses. Marine phytoplankton, marine zooplankton and freshwater angiosperms were analyzed for comparative data. A method to compare multi-element data in many samples by the seawater concentration and ocean residence time of the element is proposed. Since the geochemical behavior of the elements is based on atomic properties, general similarity are observed among elemental compositions of many biogeochemical substances. The logarithmic correlation coefficients for several biological and geological materials with respect to element abundances were calculated. In this calcultion, if the elemental concentration .of the geochemical substances are normalized by those of seawater, the values of the correlation coefficients generally increase. The correlation seems to be due to the fact that the ocean has an important relationship with all organisms and their enviromental substances.