Globally, inland waters emit over 2 Pg of carbon per year as carbon dioxide, of which the majority originates from streams and rivers. Despite the global significance of fluvial carbon dioxide emissions, little is known about their diel dynamics. Here we present a large-scale assessment of day- and night-time carbon dioxide fluxes at the water-air interface across 34 European streams. We directly measured fluxes four times between October 2016 and July 2017 using drifting chambers. Median fluxes are 1.4 and 2.1 mmol m−2 h−1 at midday and midnight, respectively, with night fluxes exceeding those during the day by 39%. We attribute diel carbon dioxide flux variability mainly to changes in the water partial pressure of carbon dioxide. However, no consistent drivers could be identified across sites. Our findings highlight widespread day-night changes in fluvial carbon dioxide fluxes and suggest that the time of day greatly influences measured carbon dioxide fluxes across European streams.
Abstract. Streams draining upland catchments carry large quantities of carbon from terrestrial stocks to downstream freshwater and marine ecosystems. Here it either enters long-term storage in sediments or enters the atmosphere as gaseous carbon through a combination of biotic and abiotic processes. There are, however, increasing concerns over the long-term stability of terrestrial carbon stores in blanket peatland catchments as a result of anthropogenic pressures and climate change. We analysed sub-annual and inter-annual changes in river water colour (a reliable proxy measurement of dissolved organic carbon; DOC) using 6 years of weekly data, from 2011 to 2016. This time-series dataset was gathered from three contiguous river sub-catchments, the Black, the Glenamong and the Srahrevagh, in a blanket peatland catchment system in western Ireland, and it was used to identify the drivers that best explained observed temporal change in river colour. The data were also used to estimate annual DOC loads from each catchment. General additive mixed modelling was used to identify the principle environmental drivers of water colour in the rivers, while wavelet cross-correlation analysis was used to identify common frequencies in correlations. At 130 mg Pt Co L−1, the mean colour levels in the Srahrevagh (the sub-catchment with lowest rainfall and higher forest cover) were almost 50 % higher than those from the Black and Glenamong, at 95 and 84 mg Pt Co L−1 respectively. The decomposition of the colour datasets revealed similar multi-annual, annual and event-based (random component) trends, illustrating that environmental drivers operated synchronously at each of these temporal scales. For both the Black and its nested Srahrevagh catchment, three variables (soil temperature, soil moisture deficit, SMD, and the weekly North Atlantic Oscillation, NAO) combined to explain 54 % and 58 % of the deviance in colour respectively. In the Glenamong, which had steeper topography and a higher percentage of peat intersected by streams, soil temperature, the log of stream discharge and the NAO explained 66 % of the colour concentrations. Cross-wavelet time-series analysis between river colour and each environmental driver revealed a significant high common power relationship at an annual time step. Each relationship however, varied in phase, further highlighting the complexity of the mechanisms driving river colour in the sub-catchments. The estimated mean annual DOC loads for the Black and Glenamong rivers to Lough Feeagh were similar at 15.0 and 14.7 t C km−2 yr−1 respectively. The important role of past and current precipitation and, in particular, temperature emphasises the vulnerability of blanket peatland carbon stores to projected climate change and highlights the interaction of local and regional climate in controlling aquatic carbon export. Our results show that water colour (and hence DOC) concentrations can vary considerably between neighbouring catchments and also that regional-scale climatic drivers control the trends in intra- and inter-annual flux of DOC through the system. The combination of locally determined concentrations and regionally controlled fluxes produces aquatic DOC loads that vary over both the annual cycle and over multiple years.
Abstract. Streams draining upland catchments mobilise significant loads of carbon from terrestrial reservoirs to downstream freshwater and marine aquatic ecosystems and ultimately, via a range of biotic and abiotic processes, to the atmosphere. 5There are increasing concerns over the long-term stability of terrestrial carbon stores in blanket peatland catchments as a result of anthropogenic pressures and climate change. We analysed sub-annual and inter-annual changes in river water colour (a reliable proxy measurement of dissolved organic carbon (DOC)) using six years of weekly data (2011 to 2016) from three contiguous river sub-catchments (Black, Glenamong and Srahrevagh) in a blanket peatland catchment system in western Ireland, assessing differences in catchment characteristics and in the drivers of temporal change. General additive mixed 10 modelling was used to identify the principle environmental drivers controlling changes in colour concentration in the rivers, while wavelet cross correlation analysis was used to identify common frequencies. Although at 130 mg PtCo L -1 , the colour levels in the Srahrevagh (the subcatchment with lower rainfall and higher forest cover) were almost 50% higher than those from the Black and Glenamong, 95 and 84 mg Pt Co L -1 respectively. The decomposition of the colour datasets revealed similar multi-annual, annual, and event-based (random component) trends, illustrating that environmental drivers operated 15 synchronously at each of these temporal scales, and also spatially within the same catchment. For the Black and its nested Srahrevagh catchment, soil temperature, soil moisture deficit and the weekly North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) explained 54% and 58% of the deviance in colour respectively. In the Glenamong, which had steeper topography and a higher percentage of peat intersected by streams, soil temperature, log of discharge and the NAO explained 66% of the colour concentrations. Cross-wavelet time-series analysis between river colour and each environmental driver revealed a significant 20 high common power relationship at an annual time step. Each each relationship however, varied in phase, further highlighting the complexity of the mechanisms driving river colour in the sub-catchments. The estimated mean annual DOC loads for the Black and Glenamong rivers to Lough Feeagh were 15 t C km 2 yr -1 and 14.7 t C km 2 yr -1 respectively, although the export values displayed significant inter-annual variation. The results of the study highlight the interaction of catchment conditions and regional meteorological drivers of aquatic carbon export and, therefore the vulnerability of blanket peatland 25 carbon stores to changes in temperature and precipitation. These changes are presently being observed and are predicted to become increasingly extreme and variable.
Detection of optic disk macroaneurysms at the time of initial presentation can be difficult because of concurrent overlying hemorrhage, but should nevertheless be kept in the differential when macular hemorrhage in multiple retinal layers is observed.
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