We examined the flux of Al to sediment accumulating beneath the zone of elevated productivity in the central equatorial Pacific Ocean, along a surface sediment transect at 135 ¿W as well as downcore for a 650 kyr record at 1.3 ¿N, 133.6 ¿W. Across the surface transect, a pronounced, broadly equatorial symmetric increase in Al accumulation is observed, relative to Ti, with Al/Ti ratios reaching values 3--4 times that of potential detrital sources. The profile parallels biogenic accumulation and the modeled flux of particulate 234Th, suggesting rapid and preferential adsorptive removal of Al from seawater by settling biogenic particles. Normative calculations confirm that most Al is unsupported by the terrigenous fraction.

The observed distributions are consistent with previous observations of the relative and absolute behavior of Al and Ti in seawater, and we can construct a reasonable mass balance between the amount of seawater-sourced Al retained in the sediment and the amount of seawater Al available in the overlying column. The close tie between Al/Ti and biogenic accumulation (as opposed to concentration) emphasizes that biogenic sedimentary Al/Ti responds to removal-transport phenomena and not buli sediment composition. Thus, in these sediments dominated by biogenic component, the bulk Al/Ti ratio reflects biogenic particle flux, and by extension, productivity of the overlying seawater. The downcore profile of Al/Ti at 1.3 ¿ displays marked increases during glacial episodes, similar to that observed across the surface transect, from a background value near Al/Ti of average upper crust. The excursions in Al/Ti are stratigraphically coincident with maxima in both bulk and CaCO3 accumulation and the excess Al appears to not be preferentially affiliated with opaline or organic phases.

Consistent with the similar behavioral removal of Al and 234Th, the latter of which responds to the total particle flux, the Al flux reflects carbonate accumulation only because carbonate comprises the dominant flux in these particular deposits. These results collectively indicate that (1) Al in biogenic sediment and settling biogenic particles is strongly affected by a component adsorbed from seawater. Therefore, the common tenet that Al is dominantly associated with terrestrial particulate matter, and the subsequent use of Al distributions to calculate the abundance and flux of terrestrial material in settling partiles and sediment, needs to be reevaluated. (2) The Al/Ti ratio in biogenic sediment can be used to trace the productivity of the overlying water, providing a powerful new paleochemical tool to investigate oceanic response to climatic variation. (3) The close correlation between the Al/Ti productivity signal and carbonate maxima downcore at 1.3 ¿N suggests that the sedimentary carbonate maxima in the central equatorial Pacific Ocean record increased productivity during glacial episodes.