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Geology

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University of South Carolina

Theses and Dissertations

2021

Chemical Budgets

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Groundwater Discharge From Passive Continental Margins: Rethinking Marine Chemical Budgets, Andrew William Osborne Jul 2021

Groundwater Discharge From Passive Continental Margins: Rethinking Marine Chemical Budgets, Andrew William Osborne

Theses and Dissertations

Geothermal convection and sediment compaction drive large-scale flow in continental shelves. We suggest that this flow is an overlooked control on the major ion chemistry of the ocean. Conventional ocean chemical budgets are constructed using river discharge, axial mid-ocean ridge (MOR) convection and CaCO3 production, but these budgets are still poorly quantified. We synthesized data from 17 passive continental margin basins to calculate a range of estimated groundwater and chemical fluxes from continental shelves, considering five major ions (Ca2+, Na+, K+, Mg2+, and Cl-). When extrapolated globally, volumetric groundwater flux estimates were comparable to those for MOR axial circulation, and …