Early diagenesis in (sub-) Arctic marine sediments and its impacts on their chemical and physical properties

Christian März

Sediments at the seafloor, similar to the pages of a book, record information as they are accummulating through time. Analysing the chemical and physical properties of these marine sediments can yield invaluable information about past climatic and environmental conditions which, in turn, can inform us about Earth's natural variability and assist predictions of future environmental change. However, similar to the ink in a book, these chemical and physical sediment properties can dissolve and be erased, or at least modified by a multitude of microbially induced biogeochemical processes. These processes, collective termed early diagenesis, occur in most marine deposits, and we need to understand their causes and effects to correctly interpret the sedimentary record. Here I will present some recent examples of early diagenetic processes and their products in sediment cores from the Arctic Ocean and North Pacific.