Collaborative Research: Calibration of Raman Spectroscopy for Calcite Saturation State in Marine Biogenic Calcification

Much of the anthropogenic CO2 released into the atmosphere has been absorbed by the ocean, which acts as a buffer against global warming and rapid climate change. But this makes seawater more acidic and corrosive to CaCO3 minerals (known as ocean acidification: OA), which is expected to harm marine organisms that build skeletons or shells from CaCO3 (marine calcifiers). Marine calcifiers typically grow their CaCO3 hard parts in a micro-scale “calcifying fluid (CF)” by modifying its chemistry from seawater to elevate the degrees of CaCO3 saturation (Ω). This process potentially enables calcifiers to cope with OA, at least to some extent. This research aims to establish the use of Raman Spectroscopy (RS) to constrain Ω of CF. Compared to other methods, this approach will be simple, rapid, and non-destructive to organisms and CaCO3 samples. This work will be a cornerstone for an important methodology that can advance knowledge on calcification mechanisms and resilience of marine calcifiers against OA. Rapid precipitation of CaCO3 at higher Ω levels leads to greater structural disorder in the mineral lattice due to increased defects and kinetically-driven uptake of minor/trace elements (e.g., Mg). Thus, the degree of lattice disorder determined from the positional shift in and width of Raman peaks should be a function of Ω. This concept has been validated for aragonites and RS has been extensively used to constrain Ω of CF in aragonitic calcifiers. But in calcites, Mg inclusion by substitution of Ca also contributes to structural disorder significantly. This necessitates a correction for Mg-driven lattice disorder for effective use of RS on calcitic organisms, which is currently lacking. This research will produce an extensive set of abiogenic calcite samples that vary significantly in Mg contents and solution Ω for precipitation based on laboratory experiments using artificial seawater. These samples will disentangle the overlapping effect of Mg inclusion and Ω on calcite structural disorder. This investigation will for the first time generate Raman calibrations for Mg contents and Ω that are applicable to marine biogenic calcites. This project is jointly funded by the Geobiology and Low-Temperature Geochemistry Program (GG), the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), and the Marine Geology and Geochemistry Program (MGG). This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.