AUTHOR=Chen Nai-Chen , Yang Tsanyao Frank , Liou Ya-Hsuan , Lin Huei-Ting Tina , Hong Wei-Li , Lin Saulwood , Su Chih-Chieh , Lin Li-Hung , Wang Pei-Ling TITLE=Controlling factors on patterns of dissolved organic carbon and volatile fatty acids in a submarine mud volcano offshore southwestern Taiwan JOURNAL=Frontiers in Earth Science VOLUME=11 YEAR=2023 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/earth-science/articles/10.3389/feart.2023.1210088 DOI=10.3389/feart.2023.1210088 ISSN=2296-6463 ABSTRACT=
Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and volatile fatty acids (VFAs) play key roles in the carbon cycling of marine sediment. Both microbially or thermally activated cracking of organic matter often produces high quantities of DOC and VFAs. To uncover the distribution pattern of DOC and VFAs in sediments under both impacts, a submarine mud volcano (SMV), was chosen to denote a model system that could witness how microbial activities react under the mixing of seawater and deeply-sourced fluids in a subsurface environment. We examined the concentration profiles of DOC and several VFAs (lactate, formate, acetate, propionate, and butyrate) in pore water, covering both sulfate reduction and methanogenesis zones, and further numerically modeled six porewater species (DOC, bromide, calcium, magnesium, ammonium, and total alkalinity) to quantify their fluxes from depth as well as the rates of