UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE an Organic Geochemical Approach to Understanding Microbial Community Dynamics During Paleoen
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE An Organic Geochemical Approach to Understanding Microbial Community Dynamics During Paleoenvironmental Transitions A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Geological Sciences by Aaron Matthew Martinez June 2020 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Gordon Love, Chairperson Dr. Mary Droser Dr. Sandra Kirtland Turner Copyright by Aaron Matthew Martinez 2020 The Dissertation of Aaron Matthew Martinez is approved: Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This research was made possible through funding and support from National Science Foundation Earth Sciences Program grants NSF-EAR 134898 and NSF-EAR 1664247, the Agouron Institute, the University of California Jump Start Fellowship, Dissertation Year Fellowship, and Blanchard Fellowship programs, the American Museum of Natural History – Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Grant, the SEPM Student Research Grant, the GCS-SEPM Foundation Ed Picou Fellowship Grant, the Geological Society of America, and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program. I am most grateful to Gordon Love, my primary advisor, who has provided expert guidance and much-needed expertise during my time at UCR. Similar thanks go to Mary Droser, with whom I had the honor of being counted as a lab member and who was always around to chat. To both of you, thank you for providing a place to call home for the last several years. Additional thanks to the members of my qualification and dissertation committees – Sandra Kirtland Turner, Marilyn Fogel, and Samantha Ying – who provided excellent feedback and discussions both about science and beyond. I have been lucky to receive a great amount support over the years. Foremost Diana Boyer, who has functioned as an informal advisor to me both in the field and away – you have my constant gratitude. I thank Carmi Thompson, Juanita Diaz, and Gordon Baird for their expertise in the field, as well as Juanita Diaz, Bridget Lee, Cecilia Lopez, Steve Bates, and Ying Lin for their expertise in the lab. iv The research presented here would not have been possibly without the help of several collaborators including Eva Stüeken, Craig Barrie, and Paul Olsen. Samples analyzed in this work were provided in part by Eva Stüeken and by courtesy of the Ocean Drilling Program. Additional access to instrumentation was provided by Marylin Fogel and Tim Lyons at UCR, Roger Buick at UW, and GeoMark Research. The writing here is, in part, reprints of the manuscripts: Martinez A.M., Boyer D.L., Droser M.L., Barrie C., and Love G.D. (2019) “A stable and productive marine microbial community was sustained through the end-Devonian Hangenberg Crisis within the Cleveland Shale of the Appalachian Basin, United States” Geobiology 17:27–42 (Chapter 2) and Stüeken, E. E., Martinez, A., Love, G., Olsen, P. E., Bates, S., and Lyons, T. W. (2019) “Effects of pH on redox proxies in a Jurassic rift lake: Implications for interpreting environmental records in deep time” Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, 252:240–267 (Chapter 3). Gordon Love was the main supervisor for Chapters 2 and 4; Eva Stüeken was the driving force behind Chapter 3. The real heroes of this dissertation are the Love Biogeochemistry Lab: Emily Haddad, who took a paleontologist and taught them chemistry; Carina Lee, a verifiable font of geochemical knowledge, friendship, and excellent musical taste; Rosemarie Bisquera, an honorable companion and the life of New Years Eve; Alex Zumberge, grand master of the smoked brisket; JP Duda, companion on the 16 bus line; Nathan Marshall, keeper of the cool; and Adriana Rizzo, who is inspiration herself. I had the great fortune to be counted as a member of the Droser Paleoecology Lab with: Robyn Dahl, a fantastic role model and bowling partner; Christine Solon Hall, soul v sister extraordinaire; Scott Evans, my Hoopla competition; Michelle Zill, the burrowmeister; Bridget Kelly, who humors my love of shells; Rachel Suprenant, tubetastic; and Phil Boan, because my life needed to be more meme-like. Further appreciation to all the UCR faculty, staff, and students from whom I have learned much. In particular, Laurie Graham to whom I turn when lab things go wrong and the BEES staff for helping life run smoothly, especially Karen Cato for logistical help with the 2018 SoCal Geobiology Symposium. Thanks again to the graduate student staff for that event: Kelden Pehr, Maria Figueroa, Chris Tino, Adam Hoffman, and Jennifer Humphreys. Much appreciation to Andrey Bekker and Gareth Funning for letting me tag along on class field trips. Sushi club with Jerlyn Swaitlowski was the highlight of many nights. Thanks to Charlie Diamond for the good taste in music, Shelley Wernette for fun Thanksgivings, Leanne Hancock for the leadership, Kim Lau for many coffee breaks, Caroline Hung for the dance parties, and Eugene Shi for keeping me fed. I highly appreciate the folks of the Geobiology Course 2017 with a shout out to Daan Speth – you made that summer one of my best. A special mention to Jennifer Humphreys, who has climbed all through life’s ups and downs with me. Similarly to Alex Kovalick, who reminds me how effortless life can be. Thanks to the continued support from my family, who still find ways to surprise me with care packages. Lastly, to my partner on many journeys past and to come, Kelden Pehr, in the immortal words of Portgas D. Ace: Thank you. vi ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION An Organic Geochemical Approach to Understanding Microbial Community Dynamics During Environmental Transitions by Aaron Matthew Martinez Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in Geological Sciences University of California, Riverside, June 2020 Dr. Gordon Love, Chairperson Organic geochemistry provides a way to explore the dynamics of past life on the Earth without requiring the preservation of discrete macrofossils. In particular, lipid biomarker analysis and stable isotope analyses, combined with sedimentological, paleontological, and other geochemical background, can be utilized to understand biogeochemical cycles as well as the sources and preservation of organic matter. These, in turn, may help unravel questions such as the distribution of primary producers during mass extinctions, hydrological dynamics of ancient rift systems, and the interactions of local environments on global carbon and climate systems. Throughout this dissertation, I will walk through time to discrete events in the history of life on Earth. Through lipid biomarker, isotope, and complimentary techniques I characterize past paleoenvironments to understand transitions occurring in the biosphere, and vice versa. We will begin at one of the great mass extinctions, the End Devonian Hangenberg Crisis. Using a mix of geochemical techniques, I locate this mass vii extinction within the Cleveland Shale Member of the Ohio Shale, then show that there is a stable microbial community of primary producers throughout the event, despite devastating losses occurring in the macrofaunal clades. Then, we fast forward to the Jurrasic, where we use a suite of environmentally relevant lipid biomarkers to constrain the hydrologic history of an ancient rift lake system and make inferences about environmental variables such as pH and salinity. Lastly, I explore some nuances of Cenozoic carbon cycle dynamics by unraveling the depositional history of organic matter at a high-latitude, nearshore marine basin and find that significant amounts of complex terrigenous materials were continuously sequestered into the early-middle Eocene Norwegian-Greenland Sea. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter One: Introduction to the Dissertation Introduction ..........................................................................................................................1 Chapter Two: A Stable and Productive Marine Microbial Community was Sustained Through the End-Devonian Hangenberg Crisis Within the Cleveland Shale of the Appalachian Basin, USA Abstract ................................................................................................................................8 Introduction ..........................................................................................................................9 Geologic setting .................................................................................................................13 Samples and methods .........................................................................................................14 Rock-Eval pyrolysis .................................................................................................15 LECO TOC ..............................................................................................................16 Carbon and nitrogen isotopes...................................................................................16 Trace metals .............................................................................................................17 Lipid biomarkers ......................................................................................................18 Ichnofabric indices ...................................................................................................20 Results ................................................................................................................................21 Total organic carbon contents and Rock-Eval pyrolysis parameters .......................21 Carbon isotopes ........................................................................................................21