ORIGINAL RESEARCH published: 15 March 2021 doi: 10.3389/feart.2021.551900 Ge/Si and Ge Isotope Fractionation During Glacial and Non-glacial Weathering: Field and Experimental Data From West Greenland J. Jotautas Baronas 1,2*, Douglas E. Hammond 1, Mia M. Bennett 3,4, Olivier Rouxel 5, Lincoln H. Pitcher 3† and Laurence C. Smith 3† 1Department of Earth Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, United States, 2Department of Earth Edited by: Sciences, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom, 3Department of Geography, University of California Los Katharine Rosemary Hendry, Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States, 4Department of Geography, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China, University of Bristol, United Kingdom 5IFREMER, Centre De Brest, Unité Géosciences Marines, Plouzané, France Reviewed by: Jade Hatton, Glacial environments offer the opportunity to study the incipient stages of chemical University of Bristol, United Kingdom Jon Hawkings, weathering due to the high availability of finely ground sediments, low water Florida State University, United States temperatures, and typically short rock-water interaction times. In this study we focused *Correspondence: on the geochemical behavior of germanium (Ge) in west Greenland, both during subglacial J. Jotautas Baronas
[email protected] weathering by investigating glacier-fed streams, as well as during a batch reactor †Present address: experiment by allowing water-sediment interaction for up to 2 years in the laboratory. Lincoln H. Pitcher, Sampled in late August 2014, glacial stream Ge and Si concentrations were low, ranging Cooperative Institute for Research in between 12–55 pmol/L and 7–33 µmol/L, respectively (Ge/Si 0.9–2.2 µmol/mol, similar Environmental Sciences (CIRES), 74 University of Colorado–Boulder, to parent rock).