Phosphorous Cycle in Marine environment

Phosphorous cycle in marine environment

1. Phosphorous Cycle Submitted by: Kumar Kashyap M. Tech Marine Biotechnology Ist Sem Introduction to Marine Sciences

2. Introduction Phosphorus is essential for life processes in plants and animals. Phosphorus is a part of the molecule that carries energy in living cells = ATP

3. Phosphorous also forms the phosphate-ester backbone of DNA and RNA. Phosphorous is also an important consituent in various cell components such as phosphoproteins and phospho -lipids in cell membrane.

4. How do plants and animals use phosphorus? Plants Animals (humans) Developing healthy seeds, root growth, and stem strength! Developing healthy bones (works with Ca to build bone tissue) Corn with a Phosphorus deficiency

5. The presence of phosphorous in the environment can impact primary production in the oceans, species distribution and ecosystem structure. In some marine and estuarine environment, phosphorous acts as a limiting factor for the primary production. So the availability of phosphorous in the marine environment can strongly effect the marine carbon cycle.

6. What is a phosphorous cycle? A phosphorus cycle may also be referred to as mineral cycle.

7. The phosphorus cycle is the movement of phosphorus from the environment to organisms and then back to the environment. Phosphorus is mainly found in water, soil, and rock. The phosphorus cycle is the SLOWEST cycle.

8. Phosphorous occurrence in the earth’s crust Eleventh most abundant element in the Earth’s crust, comprising approximately 0.1% by mass. Occurs in both organic and inorganic forms. The inorganic phosphate in minerals and organic phosphate in rocks and soils.

9. Phosphorous cycle

10. Phosphorous sources and sink in the oceans Phosphorous is primarily delivered to the ocean via continental weathering in dissolved or particulate phase via riverine flux. Much of the riverine particulate phosphorous is retained within continental shelves and hence is not involved in the open ocean processes. Atmospheric deposition through aerosols, volcanic ash and mineral dust is also important particularly to remote oceanic locations. The dissolved phosphate is converted to particulate form and then. The dominant sink for oceanic P is deposition and burial in marine sediment in this particulate form.

11. A minor sink is the uptake through sea water. In the open ocean the most of the phosphorous remains in the dissolved form (3*10^15) out of which maximum part is in the deep ocean (2.9*10^15) and a small portion (0.1*10^15) is in the surface waters.

12. Anthropogenic sources Phosphate containing fertilizers and phosphorous from other human activities are washed into rivers, groundwater and estuaries and adds a substantial amount of anthropogenic phosphorous to the oceans.

13. HUMAN IMPACTS TO PHOSPHOROUS CYCLE Humans mine LARGE quantities of phosphate rock to use in commercial fertilizers and detergents. Phosphorous is NOT found as a gas, only as a solid in the earth ’ s crust. It takes millions to hundreds of millions of years to replenish. Phosphorous is held in the tissue of the trees and vegetation, not in the soil and as we deforest the land, we remove the ability for phosphorous to replenish globally in ecosystems. Cultural eutrophication – ad excess phosphate to aquatic ecosystems in runoff of animal wastes from livestock feedlots, runoff of commercial phosphate fertilizers from cropland, and discharge of municipal sewage.

14. Reference Paytan , A. and Mclaiughlin , K. The oceanic phosphorous cycle. Chemical reviews (2007), Volume 107 (2), 563-576.