A coupled microscopy approach to assess the nano-landscape of weathering
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Final Published Version
Author
Lybrand, Rebecca AAustin, Jason C
Fedenko, Jennifer
Gallery, Rachel E
Rooney, Erin
Schroeder, Paul A
Zaharescu, Dragos G
Qafoku, Odeta
Affiliation
Univ Arizona, Sch Nat Resources & EnvironmUniv Arizona, Dept Ecol & Evolutionary Biol
Issue Date
2019-03-29
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NATURE PUBLISHING GROUPCitation
Lybrand, R. A., Austin, J. C., Fedenko, J., Gallery, R. E., Rooney, E., Schroeder, P. A., ... & Qafoku, O. (2019). A coupled microscopy approach to assess the nano-landscape of weathering. Scientific reports, 9(1), 5377.Journal
SCIENTIFIC REPORTSRights
© The Author(s) 2019. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. Te images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.Collection Information
This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at repository@u.library.arizona.edu.Abstract
Mineral weathering is a balanced interplay among physical, chemical, and biological processes. Fundamental knowledge gaps exist in characterizing the biogeochemical mechanisms that transform microbe-mineral interfaces at submicron scales, particularly in complex field systems. Our objective was to develop methods targeting the nanoscale by using high-resolution microscopy to assess biological and geochemical drivers of weathering in natural settings. Basalt, granite, and quartz (53-250 mu m) were deployed in surface soils (10 cm) of three ecosystems (semiarid, subhumid, humid) for one year. We successfully developed a reference grid method to analyze individual grains using: (1) helium ion microscopy to capture micron to sub-nanometer imagery of mineral-organic interactions; and (2) scanning electron microscopy to quantify elemental distribution on the same surfaces via element mapping and point analyses. We detected locations of biomechanical weathering, secondary mineral precipitation, biofilm formation, and grain coatings across the three contrasting climates. To our knowledge, this is the first time these coupled microscopy techniques were applied in the earth and ecosystem sciences to assess microbe-mineral interfaces and in situ biological contributors to incipient weathering.Note
Open access journalISSN
2045-2322PubMed ID
30926847Version
Final published versionSponsors
Oregon State University faculty startup fund; Office of Biological and Environmental Research; NSF [EAR-GEO-1331846, EAR-0724958, IOS-1354219]; [EAR-1023215]ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1038/s41598-019-41357-0