Advances in Ocean Deoxygenation Events and their impacts in Earth’s history

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Background

Worldwide organic-rich deposits known as “black shales” are correlated with well-constrained, unusually pronounced, oceanic deoxygenation events coined “oceanic anoxic events” or OAEs characterized by exceptional mechanisms of carbon sequestration. Greenhouse conditions are widely recognized to be associated with the controlling trigger of OAEs, also identified in terrestrial environments. In the ocean, the record of individual basins may show different responses to prevailing global forcing factors as certain localities may develop severe deoxygenation, becoming dysoxic to anoxic while others may not, due to local physiographic settings. The existing literature on Earth’s sedimentary archive also reveals that individual oceanic basins may develop anoxic to dysoxic conditions at variance with presumed triggering global factors (as shown in present analogs such as the Black Sea, Santa Barbara Basin, Cariaco Basin). Deoxygenation events recorded in deeper water settings are usually easily discerned with a combination of time series analysis using biostratigraphy, carbon isotope and redox sensitive trace elements as environmental proxies.

Constraints caused by a lack of reliable time-diagnostic fossils and varied local lithofacies in shallow-water marine environments have been redressed by advances in various correlative geochemical techniques that successfully provide robust insights in the variability of global, regional, and local responses to deoxygenation mechanisms. However, despite unprecedented advances in studies focusing on deoxygenation, the question remains to address the relationships and commonalities of these different intermittent events through time. This Research Topic aims to comprehensively assist in furthering our understanding of these unusual occurrences in relation to the Earth’s extant climate systems. We aim to explore evolving advances in research on deoxygenation events through time that will help clarify the various aspects of regional and local responses of ocean (and terrestrial) deoxygenation that may be relevant to forecasting future development of present earth’s warming climate.

We welcome contributions that examine deoxygenation events throughout Earth’s history using different kinds of well-recognized and novel proxies, including microfacies, biostratigraphy, geochemical (inorganic; TIC; TOC; stable carbon, sulfur, and other isotopic elements), organic (various biomarkers), statistical methods and models. We hope that the outcome will shed further light on the controlling global and local factors that will improve our knowledge about the potential triggering mechanisms of deoxygenation that has affected Earth’s environments throughout its history. This collection will help scientists and policy makers to be better equipped to analyze, understand, and forecast how local and regional factors acting in different areas of the Earth may be affected by the present global trend of a changing climate.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

  • Brief Research Report
  • Data Report
  • Editorial
  • Hypothesis and Theory
  • Methods
  • Mini Review
  • Opinion
  • Original Research
  • Perspective

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

  • Brief Research Report
  • Data Report
  • Editorial
  • Hypothesis and Theory
  • Methods
  • Mini Review
  • Opinion
  • Original Research
  • Perspective
  • Policy and Practice Reviews
  • Policy Brief
  • Review
  • Systematic Review
  • Technology and Code

Keywords: Deoxygenation, OAEs, Stratigraphy, Isotope geochemistry, Changing climate

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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