Coastal wetlands are significant sources of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) to adjacent waters and, consequently, exert a strong influence on the quantity and quality of DOC exported to the coastal oceans. Our understanding of the factors that control the exchange of DOC at the tidal marsh-estuarine interface, however, remains limited. We hypothesize that tidal marsh soils act as a regulator and that their physical characteristics, such as organic carbon content and mineral phase composition, are key controls on DOC exchange between soil surfaces and both surface and interstitial waters. To test this hypothesis, we generated traditional Langmuir sorption isotherms using anaerobic batch incubations of four tidal wetland soils, representing a range of soil organic carbon content (1.77% ± 0.12% to 36.2% ± 2.2%) and salinity regimes (freshwater to mixoeuhaline), across four salinity treatments. Results suggest that the maximum soil sorption capacity and DOC binding affinity increase and decrease with greater salinity, respectively, though the enhancement of maximum soil sorption capacity is somewhat mitigated in soils richer in poorly crystalline iron minerals. Initial natively sorbed organic carbon showed a significant positive correlation with soil specific surface area and K showed a moderate yet significant positive correlation with poorly crystalline iron mineral content. Taken together, these results point to a strong mineralogical control on tidal marsh sorption dynamics and a complex physicochemical response of those dynamics to salinity in tidal marsh soils.
Abstract. Anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions are acidifying the ocean, affecting calcification rates in pelagic organisms, and thereby modifying the oceanic carbon and alkalinity cycles. However, the responses of pelagic calcifying organisms to acidification vary widely between species, contributing uncertainty to predictions of atmospheric CO 2 and the resulting climate change. At the same time, ocean warming caused by rising CO 2 is expected to drive increased growth rates of all pelagic organisms, including calcifiers. It thus remains unclear whether anthropogenic CO 2 emissions will ultimately increase or decrease pelagic calcification rates. Here, we assess the importance of this uncertainty by introducing a dependence of calcium carbonate (CaCO 3 ) production on calcite saturation state ( CaCO 3 ) in an intermediate complexity coupled carbonclimate model. In a series of model simulations, we examine the impact of several variants of this dependence on global ocean carbon cycling between 1800 and 3500 under two different CO 2 emissions scenarios. Introducing a calcificationsaturation state dependence has a significant effect on the vertical and surface horizontal alkalinity gradients, as well as on the removal of alkalinity from the ocean through CaCO 3 burial. These changes result in an additional oceanic uptake of carbon when calcification depends on CaCO 3 (of up to 270 Pg C), compared to the case where calcification does not depend on acidification. In turn, this response causes a reduction of global surface air temperature of up to 0.4 • C in year 3500. Different versions of the model produced varying results, and narrowing this range of uncertainty will require better understanding of both temperature and acidification effects on pelagic calcifiers. Nevertheless, our results suggest that alkalinity observations can be used to constrain model results, and may not be consistent with the model versions that simulated stronger responses of CaCO 3 production to changing saturation state.
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