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1 School of Earth Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK r.raiswell{at}earth.leeds.ac.uk
2 Department of Geology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1301 W. Green St, Urbana, IL 61801, USA
Modern and ancient euxinic sediments are often enriched in iron that is highly reactive towards dissolved sulphide, compared to continental margin and deep-sea sediments. It is proposed that iron enrichment results from the mobilization of dissolved iron from anoxic porewaters into overlying seawater, followed by transport into deep-basin environments, precipitation as iron sulphides, and deposition into sediments. A diagenetic model shows that diffusive iron fluxes are controlled mainly by porewater dissolved iron concentrations, the thickness of the surface oxygenated layer of sediment and to a lesser extent by pH and temperature. Under typical diagenetic conditions (pH < 8, porewater Fe2+ = 10–6 g cm–3) iron can diffuse from the porewaters in continental margin sediments to the oxygenated overlying seawater at fluxes of 100–1000 µg cm–2 a–1. The addition of reactive iron to deep-basin sediments is determined by the magnitude of this diffusive flux, the export efficiency (
) of recycled iron from the shelf, the ratio of source area (S) to basin sink area (B) and the trapping of reactive iron in the deep basin. Values of are poorly constrained but modern enclosed or semi-enclosed sedimentary basins show a wide variation in S/B ratios (0.25–13) where the shelf source area is defined as sediments at less than 200 m water depth. Diffusive fluxes in the range 100–1000 µg cm–2 a–1 are able to produce the observed reactive iron enrichments in the Black Sea, the Cariaco Basin and the Gotland Deep for values of x S/B from 0.1–5. Transported reactive iron can be trapped physically and/or chemically in deep basins. Physical trapping is controlled by basin geometry and chemical capture by the presence of euxinic bottom water. The S/B ratios in modern basins may not be representative of those in ancient euxinic/semi-euxinic sediments but preliminary data suggest that x S/B in ancient euxinic sediments has a similar range as in modern euxinic sediments.
