Hydrothermal Energy Transfer and Organic Carbon Production at the Deep Seafloor

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Mis à jour : jeudi 3 octobre 2019 14:43

Nadine Le Bris, Mustafa Yücel, Anindita Das, Stefan M. Sievert, PonnaPakkam LokaBharathi and Peter R. Girguis

Review article  - doi: 10.3389/fmars.2018.00531



In just four decades, hundreds of hydrothermal vent fields have been discovered, widely distributed along tectonic plate boundaries on the ocean floor. Vent invertebrate biomass reaching up to tens of kilograms per square meter has attracted attention as a potential contributor to the organic carbon pool available in the resource-limited deep sea. But the rate of chemosynthetic production of organic carbon at deep-sea hydrothermal vents is highly variable and still poorly constrained. Despite the advent of molecular techniques and in situ sensing technologies, the factors that control the capacity of vent communities to exploit the available chemical energy resources remain largely unknown. Here, we review key drivers of hydrothermal ecosystem productivity, including (a) the diverse mechanisms governing energy transfer among biotic and abiotic processes; (b) the tight linkages among these processes; and (c) the nature and extent of spatial and temporal diversity within a variety of geological settings; and (d) the influence of these and other factors on the turnover of microbial primary producers, including those associated with megafauna.

This review has been initiated by the SCOR- InterRidge working group “hydrothermal energy transfer and the ocean carbon cycle” lead by NLB and C. R. German.

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