The Holocene silicon biogeochemistry of Yellowstone Lake, USA

Silicon (Si) is an essential macronutrient for diatoms, an important component of lacustrine primary productivity
that represents a link between the carbon and silicon cycles. Reconstructions of lake silicon cycling thus provide
an underexploited window onto lake and catchment biogeochemistry. Silicon isotope geochemistry has potential
to provide these reconstructions, given the competing source and process controls can be deconvolved. The silicarich volcanic and hydrothermal systems in Yellowstone National Park are a great source of dissolved silicon into Yellowstone Lake, a system with high silicon, and thus carbon, export rates and the formation of diatom–rich sediment. Yellowstone Lake sediments should be an archive of past silicon biogeochemistry, although the effect of sublacustrine hydrothermal activity or hydrothermal explosion events is unclear.