Sensitivity of stream dissolved organic carbon to temperature and discharge: Implications of future climates

Winterdahl, Mattias; Laudon, Hjalmar; Lyon, Steve W.; Pers, Charlotta; Bishop, Kevin

doi:10.1002/2015jg002922

Cited by 24 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 105 publications

(171 reference statements)

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“…Overall, increasing urban area controlled the long‐term trend in DOC. This is a driver that has seldom been accounted for in previous literature, given a focus on rural, headwater, and upland catchments [ Dawson et al , ; McGlynn and McDonnell , ; Temnerud and Bishop , ; Monteith et al , ; Andersson and Nyberg , ; Eimers et al , ; Kirchner , ; Morel et al , ; Graeber et al , ; Gannon et al , ; Winterdahl et al , ], even though point sources from sewage effluents can be responsible for a significant portion of the total load to a catchment [ Eatherall et al , ; Westerhoff and Anning , ; Sickman et al , ; Tian et al , ]. Nonetheless, the impact of sewage effluents and industrial wastewaters on high riverine DOC concentrations has been recognized to deserve further investigation [ Tian et al , ].…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Human impact on long‐term organic carbon export to rivers

et al. 2017

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Anthropogenic landscape alterations have increased global carbon transported by rivers to oceans since preindustrial times. Few suitable observational data sets exist to distinguish different drivers of carbon increase, given that alterations only reveal their impact on fluvial dissolved organic carbon (DOC) over long time periods. We use the world's longest record of DOC concentrations (130 years) to identify key drivers of DOC change in the Thames basin (UK). We show that 90% of the long‐term rise in fluvial DOC is explained by increased urbanization, which released to the river 671 kt C over the entire period. This source of carbon is linked to rising population, due to increased sewage effluent. Soil disturbance from land use change explained shorter‐term fluvial responses. The largest land use disturbance was during the Second World War, when almost half the grassland area in the catchment was converted into arable land, which released 45 kt C from soils to the river. Carbon that had built up in soils over decades was released to the river in only a few years. Our work suggests that widespread population growth may have a greater influence on fluvial DOC trends than previously thought.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Human impact on long‐term organic carbon export to rivers

et al. 2017

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“…The model was calibrated with a Monte Carlo approach, where 200,000 parameter sets were drawn from continuous uniform distributions (Table S4). Parameter ranges were based on physical interpretation where applicable ( γ 0 can, e.g., be estimated from stream base flow concentrations as a first‐order approximation) and previous experience [ Winterdahl et al ., , ]. Behavioral parameter sets (i.e., parameter sets that result in satisfactory model performance according to some a priori prerequisite) were identified based on a combination of the E 1 model performance measure [ Legates and McCabe , ] and the Nash‐Sutcliffe efficiency index [ Nash and Sutcliffe , ] comparing model estimates to actual concentrations as well as log‐transformed concentrations.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Decoupling of carbon dioxide and dissolved organic carbon in boreal headwater streams

et al. 2016

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Streams and rivers emit large quantities of carbon dioxide (CO2) to the atmosphere. The sources of this CO2 are in‐stream mineralization of organic carbon (OC) and CO2 input via groundwater inflow, but their relative importance is largely unknown. In this study, we quantified the role of in‐stream OC mineralization as a source of CO2 in a number of nested boreal headwater streams. The results showed that mineralization of stream OC contributed 3% of CO2 supersaturation at time scales comparable to the estimated water travel times in the streams (<24 h). Mass balances showed that downstream losses of OC were ≤3% in low‐order streams, whereas up to 16% of the OC was lost in the largest (fourth order) streams. In contrast, 85% of the CO2 was lost along the stream network (longest total stream length = 17 km). Under the assumption that in‐stream OC mineralization was the main source of stream CO2, higher rates of OC mineralization (6% of OC) than those reported across the literature (≤0.7% of OC) would be required to sustain observed CO2 supersaturation. Further, model results indicated that groundwater inflows were sufficient to sustain observed stream CO2 concentrations. We hence conclude that in‐stream OC mineralization was a minor source of CO2 in these boreal headwater systems and that the main source of stream CO2 was inflowing groundwater transporting CO2 originating from soil respiration.

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“…CC BY 4.0 License. contribution can be affected by the vertical distribution of reacting materials (Musolff et al, 2017;Bishop et al, 2004;Seibert et al, 2009;Winterdahl et al, 2016) and the relative volume contribution of source water (soil water vs groundwater below the soil-weathered rock interface) to the stream (Zhi et al, 2019;Radke et al, 2019;Weigand et al, 2017). With the shale bedrock, the groundwater contribution to the stream is relatively small (~7.5%) at Shale Hills.…”

Section: Regulation Of C-q Patternsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Temperature controls production but hydrology controls export of dissolved organic carbon at the catchment scale

Wen¹,

Perdrial²,

Bernal³

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Abstract. Lateral carbon flux through river networks is an important and poorly-understood component of the global carbon budget. This work investigates how temperature and hydrology control the production and export of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in the Susquehanna Shale Hills Critical Zone Observatory in Pennsylvania, USA. We applied the catchment-scale hydro-biogeochemical reactive transport model BioRT-Flux-PIHM to simulate the DOC dynamics. We estimated the daily DOC production rate (Rp; the sum of local DOC production rates in individual modeling grid cell) and the daily DOC export rate (Re; the product of concentration and discharge at the stream outlet) to downstream ecosystems. Simulations showed that Rp varied by less than an order of magnitude and primarily hinged on seasonal temperature change. In contrast, Re varied by more than three orders of magnitude with a strong dependence on discharge and hydrological connectivity. During summer, high temperatures led to high atmospheric water demand (and evapotranspiration) that dried and disconnected hillslope to stream. Rp reached its maximum but Re was at its minimum. The stream only exported DOC from the organic-poor groundwater and from soil water in the narrow organic-rich swales with enriched DOC such that DOC accumulated in the catchment. During the wet period (winter and spring), Rp reached its minimum but Re peaked because the stream was re-connected to a greater uphill area, flushing out the stored DOC. The model reproduced the observed concentration discharge (C–Q) relationship characterized by a flushing-dilution pattern with a rise in concentrations to a maximum (flushing) at a threshold discharge and then followed a general dilution with concentrations decreasing with discharge. This pattern was explained by the comparable contribution of organic-poor deeper groundwater and soil water from organic-rich swales at the minimum flow, maximized percentage contribution of soil water from organic-rich swales at the low flow regime, and increased contribution of uphill soil water interflow from uphill with less DOC at the high flow regime. This pattern persisted regardless of DOC production rate as long as the contribution of deeper groundwater flow remained low ( 18 %, the flushing-dilution C–Q pattern shifted towards a flushing-only pattern with DOC concentrations increasing with discharge. This study illustrates the temporal asynchrony of DOC production, mostly controlled by temperature, and DOC export, primarily governed by hydrological flow paths at the catchment scale. The occurrence of warmer and more extreme hydrological events in the future could accentuate this asynchrony, with major lateral export of DOC dominated by a few major storm events whereas DOC is produced and stored in the catchment in the prolonged drought periods.

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Sensitivity of stream dissolved organic carbon to temperature and discharge: Implications of future climates

Cited by 24 publications

References 105 publications

Human impact on long‐term organic carbon export to rivers

Human impact on long‐term organic carbon export to rivers

Decoupling of carbon dioxide and dissolved organic carbon in boreal headwater streams

Temperature controls production but hydrology controls export of dissolved organic carbon at the catchment scale

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