The Caspian Sea is heavily polluted due to industrial and agricultural effluents as well as extraction of oil and gas reserves. Microbial communities can influence the fate of contaminants and nutrients. However, insight into the microbial ecology of the Caspian Sea significantly lags behind other marine systems. Here we describe microbial biomass, diversity and composition in sediments collect...

Accumulation of Cu, Zn, Cd, and Pb in the sediment of seagrass ecosystems was examined using mesocosm experiments containing Zostera marina (eelgrass) and reference pools. Lead was approximately 20-fold higher in the surface sediment in the eelgrass pool than in eelgrass leaves and epiphytes on the eelgrass leaves, whereas zinc and cadmium were significantly lower in the surface sediment than i...

Proteins generated during primary production represent an important fraction of marine organic nitrogen and carbon, and have the potential to provide organism-specific information in the environment. The Bering Sea is a highly productive system dominated by seasonal blooms and was used as a model system for algal proteins to be tracked through the water column and incorporated into detrital sed...

Urban runoff has been reported as the second most frequent cause of surface water pollution in the United States. Due to the incidence of runoff in urban areas, it was of interest to estimate the impact runoff may have to recent sediment quality within the lower reaches of the Passaic River. Study objectives included i) review of recent urban runoff studies to determine the occurrence and patte...

In a 2.5-year-long environmental engineering experiment in the By Fjord, surface water was pumped into the deepwater where the frequency of deepwater renewals increased by a factor of 10. During the experiment, the deepwater became long-term oxic, and nitrate became the dominating dissolved inorganic nitrogen component. The amount of phosphate in the water column decreased by a factor of 5 due ...

Phosphorus (P) is a key indicator of the aquatic organism growth and eutrophication in lakes. The distribution and speciation of P and its release characteristics from sediments were investigated by analyzing sediment and water samples collected during high flow and low flow periods. Results showed that the average concentrations (ranges) of total phosphorus (TP) in the surface and deep water w...

The concentrations of organic carbon (OC) and CaCO 3 in lake sediments are often inversely related. This relation occurs in surface sediments from different locations in the same lake, surface sediments from different lakes, and with depth in Holocene sediments. Where data on accumulation rates are available, the relation holds for organic carbon and CaCO 3 accumulation rates as well. An increa...

Geochemical models of secondary mineral precipitation on Mars generally assume semiopen systems (open to the atmosphere but closed at the water-sediment interface) and equilibrium conditions. However, in natural multicomponent systems, the reactive surface area of primary minerals controls the dissolution rate and affects the precipitation sequences of secondary phases, and simultaneously, the ...

Biological markers are organic compounds in geological samples with an unambiguous link to specific precursor molecules in living organisms. They provide information on the origin and depositional environment of fossil organic matter as well as about its thermal maturation caused by geothermal heat flow during burial. Petroleum and its refinery products carry this biomarker information into the...

Allochthonous and autochthonous organic matter deposited in benthic sediments are mineralized by microbial communities, resulting in release of nutrients to the water column. Lakes with different trophic states may have sediments with different carbon and nutrient concentration with consequently different microbial communities. Microbial diversity of surface sediments of three subtropical lakes...