Acid treatment biasing to C/N, ð13C and ð15N of organic matter: a molecular insight

Abstract

Session: Modern Insights into the Paleo-carbon Cycle: d13C and a Biomarker Perspective III Posters: abstract B21E-0301Section: BiogeosciencesIt is known that acid treatment methods employed to remove inorganic carbon (IC) from sample material prior to analysis for C/N, δ13C and δ15N cause non-linear, unpredictable biasing to the organic matter (OM) fraction [1, 2, 3]. Consequently, measured C/N, δ13C and δ15N have an uncertainty much greater than instrument precision with biases for C/N reported in the range of 1 - 100, for δ13C in the range of 0.2 - 6.8 ‰ and for δ15N in the range of 0.2 - 1.5 ‰ [1, 2, 3], in both modern and palaeo environmental materials. Brodie et al [3] extended this investigation to a down-core lake sedimentary archive (Lake Tianyang, South China) and noted the potential for this biasing to preclude “common” interpretations of the data (e.g., C/N values as an OM prov...link_to_OA_fulltex