Genesis of shallow-water manganese nodules with uniquely high Mn/Fe ratios

Abstract

While manganese (Mn) nodules are authigenic metal concretions that form predominantly on deep-sea seafloor, they have also been found along shallow seafloors. The formation environments of these nodules — deep sea vs. shallow water — often result in distinct chemical and morphological characteristics. As Mn is one of the essential components of energy-storing technologies, assessing the proper estimation of Mn and metal contents in both deep- and shallow-water Mn nodules is critical. It has been found that the Mn content of shallow-water nodules is often lower than that from deep-sea environments. Here, we report the discovery of shallow-water Mn nodules with exceptionally high Mn/Fe ratios on the continental slope of the East Siberian Sea, Arctic Ocean. Despite their shallow-water origin, Mn nodules show morphological and chemical characteristics that are typically unique to deep-sea nodules. These distinctive features, including exceptionally high Mn/Fe ratios, may reflect suboxic diagenesis and the preferential remobilization and re-precipitation of Mn from the adjacent continental shelf. The formation of high Mn/Fe nodules may reflect unique ocean circulation patterns that provided oxygenated bottom waters to the study area. Particularly, Pacific Water entering through the Bering Strait, which overlaps with the nodule formation depth (160 - 240 m) and is enriched in dissolved oxygen, could facilitate Mn-rich nodule growth under suboxic diagenetic conditions since the Holocene. Shallow-water Mn nodules with uniquely high Mn/Fe ratios may offer a novel paleo-environmental proxy for reconstructing paleohydrology and biogeochemical evolutions in shallow marine environments.

Keywords

Shallow-water manganese nodules / Exceptionally high Mn/Fe ratios / Continental slope / Arctic Ocean / Paleo-environmental proxy

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Hyo Jin Koo: Writing - original draft, Visualization, Investigation, Data curation, Writing - review & editing, Formal analysis, Validation, Methodology. Hyen Goo Cho: Investigation, Funding acquisition, Conceptualization, Methodology, Supervision, Resources, Project administration. Young Keun Jin: Resources, Project administration, Funding acquisition. Dong-Hun Lee: Resources, Data curation, Investigation. Ji-Hoon Kim: Resources, Data curation, Investigation. Tae Siek Rhee: Resources, Data curation, Investigation. Jong Kuk Hong: Resources, Project administration, Funding acquisition. Sung Keun Lee: Writing - review & editing, Writing - original draft.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Korean Ministry of Ocean and Fisheries (KIMST, 20160247 and 2021-KS211512), and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) through the G-LAMP Program (RS-2023-00301938) to H.J.K., grants 2020R1F1A1049657 and 2022R1F1A1060734 to H.G.C., and grant 2020R1A3B2079815 to S.K.L. We are grateful to Professor David Ernst, the anonymous reviewers, and colleagues for their constructive comments and inputs, which greatly improved the manuscript’s quality. We also thank Editor Sanghoon Kwon for the advices.

Appendix A. Supplementary data

Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gsf.2025.102219.

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