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Materials and pathways of the organic carbon cycle through time

Nature Geoscience volume 13, pages 535–546 (2020)Cite this article

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Abstract

The cycle of organic carbon through the atmosphere, oceans, continents and mantle reservoirs is a hallmark of Earth. Over geological time, chemical exchanges between those reservoirs have produced a diversity of reduced carbon materials that differ in their molecular structures and reactivity. This reactive complexity challenges the canonical dichotomy between the surface and deep, short-term and long-term organic carbon cycle. Old and refractory carbon materials are not confined to the lithosphere but are ubiquitous in the surface environment, and the lithosphere hosts various forms of reduced carbon that can be very reactive. The biological and geological pathways that drive the organic carbon cycle have changed through time; from a synthesis of these changes, it emerges that although a biosphere is required to produce organic carbon, mortality is required to ensure its export to the lithosphere, and graphitization is essential for its long-term stabilization in the solid Earth. Among the by-products of the organic carbon cycle are the accumulation of a massive lithospheric reservoir of organic carbon, the accumulation of dioxygen in the atmosphere and the rise of a terrestrial biosphere. Besides driving surface weathering reactions, free dioxygen has allowed the evolution of new metabolic pathways to produce and respire organic carbon. From the evolution of photosynthesis until the expansion of biomineralization in the Phanerozoic, inorganic controls on the organic carbon cycle have diversified, tightening the connection between the biosphere and geosphere.

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Fig. 1: Topology of the OC cycle.
Fig. 2: Kinetic diversity of petrogenic carbonaceous material.
Fig. 3: Diversity of OCpetro materials.

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Acknowledgements

We thank M. Santosh for providing the phlogopitite sample depicted in Fig. 3b and L. Marki for the suspended sediment samples from which we obtained the spectra in Fig. 2a. We thank M. Plotze for access to his TGA-MS. We thank P. Sossi and O. Bachmann for feedback on an earlier version of the manuscript. M.E.G. thanks G. Cody, J. Hayes, J. Husson, J. Hemingway, J. Connolly, D. Rumble and O. Beyssac for helpful discussions. This project was supported through a Branco Weiss Society in Science fellowship to M.E.G. S.L.J. acknowledges support from the Swiss National Science Foundation (grants PP00P2_144811 and PP00P2_172915).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Geochemistry and Petrology, Department of Earth Sciences, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland

    Matthieu E. Galvez

  2. The Branco Weiss Fellowship – Society in Science, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland

    Matthieu E. Galvez

  3. Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Woodward W. Fischer

  4. Institute of Geological Science and Oeschger Center for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    Samuel L. Jaccard

  5. Geological Institute, Department of Earth Sciences, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland

    Timothy I. Eglinton

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M.E.G. conceived the study and led the preparation of the manuscript with writing input from all co-authors.

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Supplementary Method (for Fig. 2), Supplementary Fig. 1 and references.

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Galvez, M.E., Fischer, W.W., Jaccard, S.L. et al. Materials and pathways of the organic carbon cycle through time. Nat. Geosci. 13, 535–546 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-020-0563-8

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