Black Carbon in Aleutian Trench Sediments: Concentration, Composition, and Isotopes

11 sediment cores from the Aleutian Trench contain data on black carbon concentration, composition, and stable carbon isotopes. The total burial flux of black carbon is estimated at approximately 80,000 tons, with an annual accumulation rate of 0.9 ± 0.1 grams per square meter. Wenjie Xiao published this dataset on figshare in April 2026.

Use Cases

• Modeling global black carbon burial fluxes based on concentration data from a high-latitude hadal trench.
• Analyzing the source and composition of refractory organic carbon based on benzene polycarboxylic acid (BPCA) markers.
• Investigating carbon cycling in deep-sea trenches using stable carbon isotope (δ13C) signatures.
• Comparing carbon sink efficiency between high-latitude and low/mid-latitude trenches using accumulation rate data.

Strengths

• Includes data from 11 distinct sediment cores, providing spatial coverage within the trench.
• Reports a specific total burial flux of approximately 80,000 tons of black carbon.
• Provides a precise annual accumulation rate of 0.9 ± 0.1 grams per square meter, which is noted as 30 times the global ocean average.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for certain analyses.
• The dataset is small (104.6 KB), indicating a limited scope of data points.

Provenance

Source

figshare, authored by Wenjie Xiao.

Collection Method

Data generated using chemothermal oxidation (CTO-375), benzene polycarboxylic acid (BPCA), and isotopic analysis methods on sediment cores.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-22 12:42:36; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Aleutian Trench, a high-latitude hadal zone in the North Pacific Ocean.