Abstract:

Much of the current understanding of biogeochemical processes can be traced directly to data from sediment traps. Traps are used to quantify not only the flux patterns with space, time and depth, but also to serve as collectors for sampling sinking particles for chemical and physical analysis. While traps are widely relied upon to serve as accurate “particle gauges” in the oceans, there are different opinions about the absolute accuracy of traps. In this paper, based on the current researches, we report the results about the sources of errors in sediment trap measurements and corresponding recommendations, and focus primarily on the problems of “swimmers” removal methods and conservation of particles.