Vonk Jorien E.

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Vonk
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Jorien E.
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  • Preprint
    Differential mobilization of terrestrial carbon pools in Eurasian Arctic river basins
    ( 2013-07) Feng, Xiaojuan ; Vonk, Jorien E. ; van Dongen, Bart E. ; Gustafsson, Orjan ; Semiletov, Igor P. ; Dudarev, Oleg V. ; Wang, Zhiheng ; Montlucon, Daniel B. ; Wacker, Lukas ; Eglinton, Timothy I.
    Mobilization of Arctic permafrost carbon is expected to increase with warming-induced thawing. However, this effect is challenging to assess due to the diverse processes controlling the release of various organic carbon (OC) pools from heterogeneous Arctic landscapes. Here, by radiocarbon dating various terrestrial OC components in fluvially- and coastally-integrated estuarine sediments, we present a unique framework for deconvoluting the contrasting mobilization mechanisms of surface versus deep (permafrost) carbon pools across the climosequence of the Eurasian Arctic. Vascular-plant-derived lignin phenol 14C contents reveal significant inputs of young carbon from surface sources whose delivery is dominantly controlled by river runoff. In contrast, plant wax lipids predominantly trace ancient (permafrost) OC that is preferentially mobilized from discontinuous permafrost regions where hydrological conduits penetrate deeper into soils and thermokarst erosion occurs more frequently. As river runoff has significantly increased across the Eurasian Arctic in recent decades, we estimate from an isotopic mixing model that, in tandem with an increased transfer of young surface carbon, the proportion of mobilized terrestrial OC accounted for by ancient carbon has increased by 3-6% between 1985-2004. These findings suggest that, while partly masked by surface-carbon export, climate-change-induced mobilization of old permafrost carbon is well under way in the Arctic.
  • Preprint
    Temporal deconvolution of vascular plant-derived fatty acids exported from terrestrial watersheds
    ( 2018-09) Vonk, Jorien E. ; Drenzek, Nicholas J. ; Hughen, Konrad A. ; Stanley, Rachel H. R. ; McIntyre, Cameron P. ; Montlucon, Daniel B. ; Giosan, Liviu ; Southon, John R. ; Santos, Guaciara M. ; Druffel, Ellen R. M. ; Andersson, August A. ; Sköld, Martin ; Eglinton, Timothy I.
    Relatively little is known about the amount of time that lapses between the photosynthetic fixation of carbon by vascular land plants and its incorporation into the marine sedimentary record, yet the dynamics of terrestrial carbon sequestration have important implications for the carbon cycle. Vascular plant carbon may encounter multiple potential intermediate storage pools and transport trajectories, and the age of vascular plant carbon accumulating in marine sediments will reflect these different predepositional histories. Here, we examine down-core 14C profiles of higher plant leaf waxderived fatty acids isolated from high fidelity sedimentary sequences spanning the socalled “bomb-spike”, and encompassing a ca. 60-degree latitudinal gradient from tropical (Cariaco Basin), temperate (Saanich Inlet), and polar (Mackenzie Delta) watersheds to constrain integrated vascular plant carbon storage/transport times (“residence times”). Using a modeling framework, we find that, in addition to a "young" (conditionally defined as < 50 y) carbon pool, an old pool of compounds comprises 49 to 78 % of the fractional contribution of organic carbon (OC) and exhibits variable ages reflective of the environmental setting. For the Mackenzie Delta sediments, we find a mean age of the old pool of 28 ky (±9.4, standard deviation), indicating extensive pre-aging in permafrost soils, whereas the old pools in Saanich Inlet and Cariaco Basin sediments are younger, 7.9 (±5.0) and 2.4 (±0.50) to 3.2 (±0.54) ky, respectively, indicating less protracted storage in terrestrial reservoirs. The "young" pool showed clear annual contributions for Saanich Inlet and Mackenzie Delta sediments (comprising 24% and 16% of this pool, respectively), likely reflecting episodic transport of OC from steep hillside slopes surrounding Saanich Inlet and annual spring flood deposition in the Mackenzie Delta, respectively. Contributions of 5-10 year old OC to the Cariaco Basin show a short delay of OC inflow, potentially related to transport time to the offshore basin. Modeling results also indicate that the Mackenzie Delta has an influx of young but decadal material (20-30 years of age), pointing to the presence of an intermediate reservoir. Overall, these results show that a significant fraction of vascular plant C undergoes pre-aging in terrestrial reservoirs prior to accumulation in deltaic and marine sediments. The age distribution, reflecting both storage and transport times, likely depends on landscape-specific factors such as local topography, hydrographic characteristics, and mean annual temperature of the catchment, all of which affect the degree of soil buildup and preservation. We show that catchment-specific carbon residence times across landscapes can vary by an order of magnitude, with important implications both for carbon cycle studies and for the interpretation of molecular terrestrial paleoclimate records preserved in sedimentary sequences.
  • Preprint
    Spatial variations in geochemical characteristics of the modern Mackenzie Delta sedimentary system
    ( 2015-01) Vonk, Jorien E. ; Giosan, Liviu ; Blusztajn, Jerzy S. ; Montlucon, Daniel B. ; Graf Pannatier, Elisabeth ; McIntyre, Cameron P. ; Wacker, Lukas ; Macdonald, Robie W. ; Yunker, Mark B. ; Eglinton, Timothy I.
    The Mackenzie River in Canada is by far the largest riverine source of sediment and organic carbon (OC) to the Arctic Ocean. Therefore the transport, degradation and burial of OC along the land-to-ocean continuum for this riverine system is important to study both regionally and as a dominant representative of Arctic rivers. Here, we apply sedimentological (grain size, mineral surface area), and organic and inorganic geochemical techniques (%OC, δ13C-OC and Δ14C-OC, 143Nd/144Nd,δ2H and δ18O, major and trace elements) on particulate, bank, channel and lake surface sediments from the Mackenzie Delta, as well as on surface sediments from the Mackenzie shelf in the Beaufort Sea. Our data show a hydrodynamic sorting effect resulting in the accumulation of finer-grained sediments in lake and shelf deposits. A general decrease in organic carbon (OC) to mineral surface area ratios from river-to-sea furthermore suggests a loss of mineral-bound terrestrial OC during transport through the delta and deposition on the shelf. The net isotopic value of the terrestrial OC that is lost en route, derived from relationships between δ13C, OC and surface area, is -28.5‰ for δ13C and -417‰ for Δ14C. We calculated that OC burial efficiencies are around 55%, which are higher (~20%) than other large river systems such as the Amazon. Old sedimentary OC ages, up to 12 14C-ky, suggest the delivery of both a petrogenic OC source (with an estimated contribution of 19±9%) as well as a pre-aged terrestrial OC source. We calculated the 14C-age of this pre-aged, biogenic, component to be about 6100 yrs, or -501‰, which illustrates that terrestrial OC in the watershed can reside for millennia in soils before being released into the river. Surface sediments in lakes across the delta (n=20) showed large variability in %OC (0.92% to 5.7%) and δ13C (-30.7‰ to -23.5‰). High-closure lakes, flooding only at exceptionally high water levels, hold high sedimentary OC contents (> 2.5%) and young biogenic OC with a terrestrial or an autochthonous source whereas no-closure lakes, permanently connected to a river channel, hold sediments with pre-aged, terrestrial OC. The intermediate low-closure lakes, flooding every year during peak discharge, display the largest variability in OC content, age and source, likely reflecting variability in for example the length of river-lake connections, the distance to sediment source and the number of intermediate settling basins. Bank, channel and suspended sediment show variable 143Nd/144Nd values, yet there is a gradual but distinct spatial transition in 143Nd/144Nd (nearly three ε units; from -11.4 to -13.9) in the detrital fraction of lake surface sediments from the western to the eastern delta. This reflects the input of younger Peel River catchment material in the west and input of older geological source material in the east, and suggests that lake sediments can be used to assess variability in source watershed patterns across the delta.