TT32B:
Earth in Five Reactions: What Makes Our Planet Unique in the Solar System?


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Session ID#: 49648

Session Description:
What makes Earth special? This question, and the desire to synthesize a decade of scientific research under the banner of the Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO; deepcarbon.net), drove us to explore the idea of distilling the planet’s essence into a set of key reactions that make Earth unique. This project sparked lively debate, and made for a fascinating integration across multiple Earth science disciplines about which reactions matter and why. Ultimately, we came away from the workshop with a "top five" list of reaction classes : 1. hydrogenation / dehydrogenation 2. carboxylation / decarboxylation 3. carbonation / decarbonation 4. aqueous silicate melt / solid 5. hydration / dehydration. Three runners-up involve redox reactions that form diamonds and sequester carbon into the core, and the freezing/melting reaction in the core. In this tutorial, we will review the process of arriving at a consensus and the reasoning behind our designation of the top reactions and their impact on Earth. We also will highlight how we are using this framework to synthesize a decade of deep carbon science into a special issue for consumption by the scientific community as well as a suite of engagement and outreach products for a public audience.
Primary Presenter:  Jie Li, University of Michigan Ann Arbor, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Ann Arbor, United States
Presenters:  Simon A T Redfern, Nanyang Technological University, Asian School of the Environment, Singapore, Singapore, Marie Edmonds, University of Cambridge, Department of Earth Sciences, Cambridge, United Kingdom, Donato Giovannelli, Rutgers University New Brunswick, New Brunswick, NJ, United States and Louise H Kellogg, University of California - Davis, Earth and Planetary Sciences, Davis, CA, United States

Cross-Listed:
  • B - Biogeosciences
  • EP - Earth and Planetary Surface Processes
  • SI - Societal Impacts and Policy Sciences
  • V - Volcanology, Geochemistry and Petrology
Index Terms:

0428 Carbon cycling [BIOGEOSCIENCES]
0810 Post-secondary education [EDUCATION]
1012 Reactions and phase equilibria [GEOCHEMISTRY]
1030 Geochemical cycles [GEOCHEMISTRY]

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