ArticleGlobal biogeochemical cycles2019
Drivers of Carbon Export Efficiency in the Global Ocean.
Article in Global biogeochemical cycles, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers.
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Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed.
- Key link between iron and the size structure of three major mesoplanktonic groups in the upper ocean.Nature communications · 2026Article
- How much do zooplankton and fine-scale processes matter for the ocean biological pump?Nature communications · 2026Article
- Gut Microbiomes of Marine Zooplankton: Consequences for Host Performance, the Biological Carbon Pump, and Prokaryote Biogeography.Environmental microbiology · 2026Review
- Environmental drivers and key taxa shaping diatom-dinoflagellate ratios in eutrophic coastal waters.Marine life science & technology · 2026Article
- Phytoplankton phenology through gene expression during the North Atlantic spring bloom decline.ISME communications · 2026Article
- Emergent Relationships Between the Functional Diversity of Marine Planktonic Copepods and Ecosystem Functioning in the Global Ocean.Global change biology · 2025Article
- Inefficient transfer of diatoms through the subpolar Southern Ocean twilight zone.Nature geoscience · 2025Article
- Ecological dynamics explain modular denitrification in the ocean.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Microbial Metagenomes Across a Complete Phytoplankton Bloom Cycle: High-Resolution Sampling Every 4 Hours Over 22 Days.Scientific data · 2024Article
- Microbial Metagenomes Across a Complete Phytoplankton Bloom Cycle: High-Resolution Sampling Every 4 Hours Over 22 Days.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Bacteria and Archaea Regulate Particulate Organic Matter Export in Suspended and Sinking Marine Particle Fractions.mSphere · 2023Article
- Biogenic carbon pool production maintains the Southern Ocean carbon sink.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- RNA sequencing indicates widespread conservation of circadian clocks in marine zooplankton.NAR genomics and bioinformatics · 2023Article
- Fungal parasitism on diatoms alters formation and bio-physical properties of sinking aggregates.Communications biology · 2023Article
- Impact of particle flux on the vertical distribution and diversity of size-fractionated prokaryotic communities in two East Antarctic polynyas.Frontiers in microbiology · 2023Article
- Biogeographical Classification of the Global Ocean From BGC-Argo Floats.Global biogeochemical cycles · 2022Article
- The value of scientific research on the ocean's biological carbon pump.The Science of the total environment · 2020Article
- Trophic ecology, habitat, and migratory behaviour of the viperfish Chauliodus sloani reveal a key mesopelagic player.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Grand Challenges in Microbe-Driven Marine Carbon Cycling Research.Frontiers in microbiology · 2020Article
- Highly variable iron content modulates iceberg-ocean fertilisation and potential carbon export.Nature communications · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The export of organic carbon from the surface ocean forms the basis of the biological carbon pump, an important planetary carbon flux. Typically, only a small fraction of primary productivity (PP) is exported (quantified as the export efficiency: export/PP). Here we assemble a global data synthesis to reveal that very high export efficiency occasionally occurs. These events drive an apparent inverse relationship between PP and export efficiency, which is opposite to that typically used in empirical or mechanistic models. At the global scale, we find that low PP, high export efficiency regimes tend to occur when macrozooplankton and bacterial abundance are low. This implies that a decoupling between PP and upper ocean remineralization processes can result in a large fraction of PP being exported, likely as intact cells or phytoplankton-based aggregates. As the proportion of PP being exported declines, macrozooplankton and bacterial abundances rise. High export efficiency, high PP regimes also occur infrequently, possibly associated with nonbiologically mediated export of particles. A similar analysis at a biome scale reveals that the factors affecting export efficiency may be different at regional and global scales. Our results imply that the whole ecosystem structure, rather than just the phytoplankton community, is important in setting export efficiency. Further, the existence of low PP, high export efficiency regimes imply that biogeochemical models that parameterize export efficiency as increasing with PP may underestimate export flux during decoupled periods, such as at the start of the spring bloom.
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