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Short-lived U/Th Series Radionuclides in the Ocean: Tracers for Scavenging Rates, Export Fluxes and Particle Dynamics

Marine Sciences Research Center, State University of New York, Stony Brook, New York 11794-5000, U.S.A.

P. Masqué

Departament de Física, Institut de Ciències i Tecnologies Ambientals, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193 Bellaterra, Spain

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

	1. INTRODUCTION

 
The uranium and thorium decay series have numerous radionuclides with half-lives ranging from fractions of a second to a few years. The former include many of the isotopes of radon, polonium, bismuth, lead and thallium and these are generally too short to show appreciable disequilibrium with respect to their precursors in the decay series. Others, however, have half-lives that make them useful in tracing a variety of oceanic processes that occur on short time scales. This group includes isotopes of thorium: ²³⁴Th (half-life = 24.1 d), ²²⁷Th (18.6 d), ²²⁸Th (1.9 y), radium: ²²⁴Ra (3.64 d), ²²³Ra (11.1 d), radon: ²²²Rn (3.8 d) and polonium: ²¹⁰Po (138 d). Of these, the Th isotopes and ²¹⁰Po are particle-reactive, while the radium isotopes and radon tend to remain in solution. As a consequence, Th and Po are useful in quantifying the rate of scavenging from solution onto particles and the processes governing the dynamics of particles in the ocean, while Ra and Rn are appropriate tracers for fluid processes such as advection and diffusion (Cochran 1992). Other chapters in this volume highlight recent developments in the use of short-lived Ra isotopes and Rn as tracers of estuarine mixing and submarine groundwater discharge (Swarzenski et al. 2003; Porcelli and Swarzenski 2003). Likewise, the oceanic chemistries of the longer-lived particle reactive radionuclides in the U/Th series, such as ²³⁰Th, ²³¹Pa and ²¹⁰Pb are treated elsewhere in this volume (Henderson and Anderson 2003). Accordingly our emphasis here is with recent developments in the application of the short-lived Th isotopes (²³⁴Th, ²²⁷Th, ²²⁸Th) and ²¹⁰Po as tracers for particle-associated processes. These radionuclides have in common the fact that each is produced by a longer lived parent which is stably dissolved or tends to remain in solution longer than . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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