• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.35 no.5
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• pp.305-312
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• 2014

A number of coated grains (spherical to elongated ones in shape) were collected from a small stream, Dijon, France. They were characterized by typical concentric lamination surrounding broken twigs, and were thus identified as concentric precipitation on plant twigs. Within carbonate coatings of the plant twigs, two morphological groups including, eukaryotic green algae (Vaucheria sp.) and cyanobacteria (Scytonema sp. and Rivularia sp.) were detected, which form carbonate crystals that are surrounding their filaments. The filaments could have triggered carbonate precipitation by photosynthetic removal of $CO_2$ causing the increase of alkalinity of the water, and by supporting their sheaths as nucleation sites. Such encrusted twigs were found from 70 meters downstream, in which temperature and pH were measured as $11.1^{\circ}C$ and 8.18, respectively. These water chemistries ($11.1^{\circ}C$ and pH 8.18), with the aid of microbial photosynthesis, were likely to provide a suitable condition for carbonate precipitation on the twigs.