Magnesium Isotopes
Tracer for the Global Biogeochemical Cycle of Magnesium Past and Present or Archive of Alteration?

Seawater chemistry has changed over Earth history. How do Mg isotopes help trace this change?

Edward T. Tipper (Author)

9781108994309, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 3 March 2022

75 pages
22.7 x 15.1 x 0.2 cm, 0.067 kg

Magnesium is a major constituent in silicate and carbonate minerals, the hydrosphere and the biosphere. Magnesium is constantly cycled between these reservoirs. Since each of the major planetary reservoirs of magnesium have different magnesium isotope ratios, there is scope to use magnesium isotope ratios to trace 1) the processes that cycle Magnesium at a spatial scales from the entire planet to microscopic and 2) the relative fluxes between these reservoirs. This review summarises some of the key motivations, successes and challenges facing the use of magnesium isotopes to construct a budget of seawater magnesium, present and past.

1. Introduction
2. What do Mg isotopes promise?
3. The modern oceanic budget system
4. Past records of seawater
5. Diagenesis: Not records of seawater at all?
6. Perspectives for the future
7. Key papers.

Subject Areas: Meteorology & climatology [RBP], Oceanography [seas RBKC], Geochemistry [RBGK], Geology & the lithosphere [RBG], Earth sciences [RB]