Articles | Volume 21, issue 12
https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-2541-2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-2541-2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Research article
| 
05 Dec 2025
Research article |
| 05 Dec 2025
| 05 Dec 2025
Photic zone niche partitioning, stratification, and carbon cycling in the tropical Indian Ocean during the Piacenzian
School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Cardiff University, Cardiff, United Kingdom
Department of Earth Sciences, University College London, London, United Kingdom
Ian R. Hall
School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Cardiff University, Cardiff, United Kingdom
Luc Beaufort
CNRS-CEREGE, BP 80, 13545 Aix-en-Provence CEDEX 04, France
Melissa A. Berke
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA
Alexandra Nederbragt
School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Cardiff University, Cardiff, United Kingdom
Paul R. Bown
Department of Earth Sciences, University College London, London, United Kingdom
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Medhavi Srivastava, Clara T. Bolton, Luc Beaufort, Franck Bassinot, and Katarína Holcová
J. Micropalaeontol., 44, 555–571, https://doi.org/10.5194/jm-44-555-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/jm-44-555-2025, 2025
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The Bay of Bengal is a unique region influenced by the Asian monsoon. We present a record of past ocean productivity and carbonate flux based on the fossil remains of calcifying algae over the last 279 000 years from a core in the northern Bay of Bengal. We used AI microscopy to count and measure plankton fossils and identify species. Results show that coccolith export, including of the species Florisphaera profunda, is highest when the monsoon is weak and the water column is more mixed.
Peter K. Bijl, Kasia K. Śliwińska, Bella Duncan, Arnaud Huguet, Sebastian Naeher, Ronnakrit Rattanasriampaipong, Claudia Sosa-Montes de Oca, Alexandra Auderset, Melissa A. Berke, Bum Soo Kim, Nina Davtian, Tom Dunkley Jones, Desmond D. Eefting, Felix J. Elling, Pierrick Fenies, Gordon N. Inglis, Lauren O'Connor, Richard D. Pancost, Francien Peterse, Addison Rice, Appy Sluijs, Devika Varma, Wenjie Xiao, and Yi Ge Zhang
Biogeosciences, 22, 6465–6508, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-22-6465-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-22-6465-2025, 2025
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Many academic laboratories worldwide process environmental samples for analysis of membrane lipid molecules of archaea, for the reconstruction of past environmental conditions. However, the sample workup scheme involves many steps, each of which has a risk of contamination or bias, affecting the results. This paper reviews steps involved in sampling, extraction and analysis of lipids, interpretation and archiving of the data. This ensures reproducible, reusable, comparable and consistent data.
Anne L. Kruijt, Robin van Dijk, Olivier Sulpis, Luc Beaufort, Guillaume Lassus, Geert-Jan Brummer, A. Daniëlle van der Burg, Ben A. Cala, Yasmina Ourradi, Katja T. C. A. Peijnenburg, Matthew P. Humphreys, Sonia Chaabane, Appy Sluijs, and Jack J. Middelburg
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-4234, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-4234, 2025
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We measured the three main types of plankton that produce calcium carbonate in the ocean, at the same time and location. While coccolithophores were the biggest contributors, we found that planktonic gastropods, not foraminifera, were the second largest contributor. This challenges the current view and improves our understanding of how these organisms influence oceans’ carbon cycling.
Pauline Cornuault, Luc Beaufort, Heiko Pälike, Torsten Bickert, Karl-Heinz Baumann, and Michal Kucera
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-198, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-198, 2025
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We present new high-resolution data of the relative contribution of the two main pelagic carbonate producers (coccoliths and foraminifera) to the total pelagic carbonate production from the tropical Atlantic in past warm periods since the Miocene. Our findings suggests that the two groups responded differently to orbital forcing and oceanic changes in tropical ocean, but their proportion changes did not drive the changes in overall pelagic carbonate deposition.
Catherine C. Beck, Melissa Berke, Craig S. Feibel, Verena Foerster, Lydia Olaka, Helen M. Roberts, Christopher A. Scholz, Kat Cantner, Anders Noren, Geoffery Mibei Kiptoo, James Muirhead, and the Deep Drilling in the Turkana Basin (DDTB) project team
Sci. Dril., 33, 93–108, https://doi.org/10.5194/sd-33-93-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/sd-33-93-2024, 2024
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The Deep Drilling in the Turkana Basin project seeks to determine the relative impacts of tectonics and climate on eastern African ecosystems. To organize goals for coring, we hosted a workshop in Nairobi, Kenya, which focused on how a 4 Myr sedimentary core from Turkana will uniquely address research objectives related to basin evolution, past climates and environments, and modern resources. We concluded that a Pliocene to modern record is best accomplished through a two-phase drilling project.
Luc Beaufort and Anta-Clarisse Sarr
Clim. Past, 20, 1283–1301, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-20-1283-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-20-1283-2024, 2024
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At present, under low eccentricity, the tropical ocean experiences a limited seasonality. Based on eight climate simulations of sea surface temperature and primary production, we show that, during high-eccentricity times, significant seasons existed in the tropics due to annual changes in the Earth–Sun distance. Those tropical seasons are slowly shifting in the calendar year to be distinct from classical seasons. Their past dynamics should have influenced phenomena like ENSO and monsoons.
Melissa A. Berke, Daniel J. Peppe, and the LVDP team
Sci. Dril., 33, 21–31, https://doi.org/10.5194/sd-33-21-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/sd-33-21-2024, 2024
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Lake Victoria is home to the largest human population surrounding any lake in the world and provides critical resources across eastern Africa. It is vital to understand the connection between the lake and climate and how it has changed through its history, but to do so we need a complete archive of the sedimentary record. To evaluate the Lake Victoria basin as a potential drilling target, ~50 scientists met in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in July 2022 for the Lake Victoria Drilling Project workshop.
Celina Rebeca Valença, Luc Beaufort, Gustaaf Marinus Hallegraeff, and Marius Nils Müller
Biogeosciences, 21, 1601–1611, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-21-1601-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-21-1601-2024, 2024
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Coccolithophores contribute to the global carbon cycle and their calcite structures (coccoliths) are used as a palaeoproxy to understand past oceanographic conditions. Here, we compared three frequently used methods to estimate coccolith mass from the model species Emiliania huxleyi and the results allow for a high level of comparability between the methods, facilitating future comparisons and consolidation of mass changes observed from ecophysiological and biogeochemical studies.
Martin Tetard, Laetitia Licari, Ekaterina Ovsepyan, Kazuyo Tachikawa, and Luc Beaufort
Biogeosciences, 18, 2827–2841, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-2827-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-2827-2021, 2021
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Oxygen minimum zones are oceanic regions almost devoid of dissolved oxygen and are currently expanding due to global warming. Investigation of their past behaviour will allow better understanding of these areas and better prediction of their future evolution. A new method to estimate past [O2] was developed based on morphometric measurements of benthic foraminifera. This method and two other approaches based on foraminifera assemblages and porosity were calibrated using 45 core tops worldwide.
Luc Beaufort, Yves Gally, Baptiste Suchéras-Marx, Patrick Ferrand, and Julien Duboisset
Biogeosciences, 18, 775–785, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-775-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-775-2021, 2021
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The coccoliths are major contributors to the particulate inorganic carbon in the ocean. They are extremely difficult to weigh because they are too small to be manipulated. We propose a universal method to measure thickness and weight of fine calcite using polarizing microscopy that does not require fine-tuning of the light or a calibration process. This method named "bidirectional circular polarization" uses two images taken with two directions of a circular polarizer.
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Short summary
We investigated sediments from the tropical Indian Ocean to study water column structure and carbon cycling during the mid-Piacenzian Warm Period, about 3 million years ago, when atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were similar to today. Our findings reveal persistent upper ocean stratification and niche separation among plankton groups, which limited nutrient mixing and carbon export to the deep ocean. These results highlight how ocean layering can influence climate feedback in a warmer world.
We investigated sediments from the tropical Indian Ocean to study water column structure and...
