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I wonder what effects on the ecosystem it will have when the ice sheet is too small to introduce comparable amounts of sediment into the ocean.



That's an interesting question. Fe and P are probably the most relevant nutrients that are abundant in suspended glacial rock flour. Since Fe3+ is pretty insoluble in seawater, the suspended (vs. dissolved) load might actually matter -- wind-blown dust would be the #1 competitor. The first relevant paper I found suggests the dust still dominates [1], but it was clearly enough of a consideration for them to write a paper about it. And sometimes the wind-blown dust is actually glacial rock flour [2], so the plot thickens!

[1] https://doi.org/10.1007/s10533-015-0091-6

[2] https://doi.org/10.1029/2010GL046573




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