Mount Roe

Rye R. and Holland H. D. (2000) Life associated with a 2.76 Ga ephemeral pond Evidence from Mount Roe 2 paleosol. Geology 28, 483 -486. 

There is also evidence for the presence of methanotrophs in the 2.8 Ga old Mount Roe palaeosol. This contains highly fractionated organic carbon, probably recording the activity of methanotrophs living near ephemeral ponds this implies that significant biological methane sources existed in the late Archean (Rye and Holland, 2000). Oil is also present in some Archean sandstone (Dutkeiwicz et al, 1998, Rasmussen and Buick, 2000). 

Paleosols. Paleosols formed before 2.2 Ga tend to contain iron silicates, rather than siderite-iron carbonate. Rye et al. (1995) used carbonate-silicate mineral equilibria in the 2.75 Ga Mount Roe paleosol to estimate the partitioning of COa between soil and air in the late Archaean. Their calculations suggest a maximum partial pressure of 10 14 (0.04) atmospheres COa in the late Archaean atmosphere, significantly lower than the estimate of Lowe and Tice (2004) based on nahcolite. A lower limit for atmospheric COa comes from the study of siderite-clay mineral equilibria for weathering rinds on clasts in river gravels from the 3.2 Ga Moodies Group of the Barberton greenstone belt, in south Africa (Hessler et al., 2004). In this study the minimum partial pressure for atmospheric COa at 3.2 Ga was calculated to be 2.5 X 10 3 bars at 25°C. 

MGC/PLASMOX developed a portable unit, Model RIF 2, that was put into operation in 1994 and has since built additional units. The RIF 2 is skid-mounted and designed to be moved by four standard tractor-trailers. The unit has been used in Europe and is permitted under both Swiss and German environmental laws and regulations. It was used successfully to destroy chemical agents for the Swiss Army at its chemical materiel laboratory in Spiez, Switzerland. The PLASMOX tests run by the Germans and Swiss indicate that the system will destroy chemical agent safely and rapidly (Bums and Roe, 2001). 

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