Transport of organic carbon in the world's rivers

Schlesinger, William H.; Mélack, John M.

doi:10.3402/tellusa.v33i4.10730

Cited by 73 publications

(83 citation statements)

References 49 publications

(77 reference statements)

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“…Boreal peatlands, for example, one of the most consistent long term C stores on land, have accumulated about 2-7 g C m )2 y )1 over the Holocene (Post and others 1982;Smith and others 2004). Except for rapidly aggrading ecosystems, much of terrestrial NEP is exported by fluvial processes (Schlesinger and Melack 1981;Fahey and others 2005), consistent with the slow accumulation rate of soil carbon observed in many regions (Tremblay and others 2002;Liski and Westman 1997).…”

Section: Formulating Integrated C Budgetsmentioning

confidence: 81%

“…The inclusion of the net effect of inundated floodplains could raise this to possibly 1.65 Pg C y )1 and we are still missing significant types of aquatic systems. Even our conservative global value of 0.75 Pg C y )1 represents nearly twice the organic fraction of the carbon annually delivered to the oceans (Schlesinger and Melack 1981;Meybeck 1993;Harrison and others 2005), and is much larger than the rate at which carbon is buried in these systems (see below). As this CO 2 loss comes largely as the result of the decomposition of organic matter, its large magnitude suggests that inland waters oxidize a substantial fraction of the organic load they receive from land.…”

Section: Wetlandsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These fluxes are large, fairly well quantified, and have been derived from estimates of water discharge (for example, Dai and Trenberth 2002) and measurements of aqueous carbon concentrations. River export of organic carbon to the sea has thus been estimated as ranging from 0.38 (Degens and others 1991) to 0.53 Pg C y )1 (Stallard 1998) with several other estimates falling within this range (for example, Schlesinger and Melack 1981;Meybeck 1982;Ludwig and others 1996;Aitkenhead and McDowell 2000; Table 1). Riverine export of dissolved inorganic carbon resulting from the fixation of atmospheric carbon through rock weathering is likely to be between 0.21 and 0.3 Pg C y )1 (Suchet and Probst 1995;Stallard 1998, Table 1).…”

Section: Transport In Rivers and Groundwatermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A feature of this generation of models is that the role of inland aquatic environments is rarely explicitly included. Work during the 1970s and 1980s demonstrated that rivers deliver significant amounts of terrestrially-derived organic and inorganic C from land to the sea (Degens and others 1991;Schlesinger and Melack 1981). This riverine ''pipe'' transports C from land to the ocean.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Plumbing the Global Carbon Cycle: Integrating Inland Waters into the Terrestrial Carbon Budget

et al. 2007

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Because freshwater covers such a small fraction of the Earth's surface area, inland freshwater ecosystems (particularly lakes, rivers, and reservoirs) have rarely been considered as potentially important quantitative components of the carbon cycle at either global or regional scales. By taking published estimates of gas exchange, sediment accumulation, and carbon transport for a variety of aquatic systems, we have constructed a budget for the role of inland water ecosystems in the global carbon cycle. Our analysis conservatively estimates that inland waters annually receive, from a combination of background and anthropogenically altered sources, on the order of 1.9 Pg C y )1 from the terrestrial landscape, of which about 0.2 is buried in aquatic sediments, at least 0.8 (possibly much more) is returned to the atmosphere as gas exchange while the remaining 0.9 Pg y )1 is delivered to the oceans, roughly equally as inorganic and organic carbon. Thus, roughly twice as much C enters inland aquatic systems from land as is exported from land to the sea. Over prolonged time net carbon fluxes in aquatic systems tend to be greater per unit area than in much of the surrounding land. Although their area is small, these freshwater aquatic systems can affect regional C balances. Further, the inclusion of inland, freshwater ecosystems provides useful insight about the storage, oxidation and transport of terrestrial C, and may warrant a revision of how the modern net C sink on land is described.

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Section: Formulating Integrated C Budgetsmentioning

confidence: 81%

Section: Wetlandsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Transport In Rivers and Groundwatermentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Plumbing the Global Carbon Cycle: Integrating Inland Waters into the Terrestrial Carbon Budget

et al. 2007

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“…(Table 4). This relates to an underestimation of temperate biomes by Meybeck [1981] and an underestimation of boreal, temperate and tropical biomes by Schlesinger & Melack [ 1981 ].…”

Section: Estimate Of Annual Dissolved Organic Carbon Flux From Terresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Soil C:N ratio as a predictor of annual riverine DOC flux at local and global scales

Aitkenhead¹,

McDowell²

2000

Global Biogeochemical Cycles

450

297

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Century‐long increasing trend and variability of dissolved organic carbon export from the Mississippi River basin driven by natural and anthropogenic forcing

Ren

Tian

Cai

et al. 2016

Global Biogeochemical Cycles

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There has been considerable debate as to how natural forcing and anthropogenic activities alter the timing and magnitude of the delivery of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) to the coastal ocean, which has ramifications for the ocean carbon budget, land‐ocean interactions, and coastal life. Here we present an analysis of DOC export from the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico during 1901–2010 as influenced by changes in climate, land use and management practices, atmospheric CO2, and nitrogen deposition, through the integration of observational data with a coupled hydrologic/biogeochemical land model. Model simulations show that DOC export in the 2000s increased more than 40% since the 1900s. For the recent three decades (1981–2010), however, our simulated DOC export did not show a significant increasing trend, which is consistent with observations by U.S. Geological Survey. Our factorial analyses suggest that land use and land cover change, including land management practices (LMPs: i.e., fertilization, irrigation, tillage, etc.), were the dominant contributors to the century‐scale trend of rising total riverine DOC export, followed by changes in atmospheric CO2, nitrogen deposition, and climate. Decadal and interannual variations of DOC export were largely attributed to year‐to‐year climatic variability and extreme flooding events, which have been exacerbated by human activity. LMPs show incremental contributions to DOC increase since the 1960s, indicating the importance of sustainable agricultural practices in coping with future environmental changes such as extreme flooding events. Compared to the observational‐based estimate, the modeled DOC export was 20% higher, while DOC concentrations were slightly lower. Further refinements in model structure and input data sets should enable reductions in uncertainties in our prediction of century‐long trends in DOC.

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Transport of organic carbon in the world's rivers

Cited by 73 publications

References 49 publications

Plumbing the Global Carbon Cycle: Integrating Inland Waters into the Terrestrial Carbon Budget

Plumbing the Global Carbon Cycle: Integrating Inland Waters into the Terrestrial Carbon Budget

Soil C:N ratio as a predictor of annual riverine DOC flux at local and global scales

Century‐long increasing trend and variability of dissolved organic carbon export from the Mississippi River basin driven by natural and anthropogenic forcing

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