Tectonic processes in Papua New Guinea and past productivity in the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean

Phytoplankton growth in the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean today accounts for about half of the ‘new’ production—the fraction of primary production fuelled by externally supplied nutrients—in the global ocean. The recent demonstration that an inadequate supply of iron limits primary production in this region1 supports earlier speculation that, in the past, fluctuations in the atmospheric deposition of iron-bearing dust may have driven large changes in productivity2. But we argue here that only small (∼2 nM) increases in the iron concentration in source waters of the upwelling Equatorial Undercurrent are needed to fuel intense diatom production across the entire eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean. Episodic increases in iron concentrations of this magnitude or larger were probably frequent in the past because a large component of the undercurrent originates in the convergent island-arc region of Papua New Guinea, which has experienced intensive volcanic, erosional and seismic activity over the past 16 million years. Cycles of plankton productivity recorded in eastern equatorial Pacific sediments may therefore reflect the influence of tectonic processes in the Papua New Guinea region superimposed on the effects of global climate forcing.