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Goldschmidt 2008 Session: Biogeochemistry of weathering in glacial environments
July 13 - 18th, 2008 Goldschmidt2008 in Vancouver, Canada
July 13 - 18th, 2008 Goldschmidt2008 in Vancouver, Canada
Session 16d: Biogeochemistry of weathering in glacial environments: local,regional, global and extraterrestrial consequences.
Convenors: Rachael James, Mark Skidmore, Martyn Tranter
Keynote speaker: Rob Raiswell (University of Leeds)
The ice within and the beds beneath glaciers are no longer believed to be inert. Instead, there is a microbial presence which may be metabolizing slowly in interconnected liquid vein networks within the ice and is active in aquatic environments at the bed. Our expectation now is that microbial communities will exist in the basal waters - lakes and other hydrological flow paths - under the Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheets, and that these communities can be sustained by energy and nutrient sources produced by glacial erosion of bedrock and other over-ridden debris. This session will have four principal sub-themes: a) Biogeochemical processes in the glacial environments; b) Microbial utilization of diverse REDOX couples in glacial environments; c) Geochemical fluxes from glaciated terrain and their consequences and; d) Geochemistry of glacial weathering on other icy planetary bodies.
Please contact Martyn Tranter (
m.tranter@bristol.ac.uk) if you need any further information.