Usman Muhammed

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Last Name
Usman
First Name
Muhammed
ORCID
0000-0002-7165-4154

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  • Preprint
    Global-scale evidence for the refractory nature of riverine black carbon
    ( 2018-05) Coppola, Alysha I. ; Wiedemeier, Daniel B. ; Galy, Valier ; Haghipour, Negar ; Hanke, Ulrich ; Nascimento, Gabriela S. ; Usman, Muhammed ; Blattmann, Thomas M. ; Reisser, Moritz ; Freymond, Chantal V. ; Zhao, Meixun ; Voss, Britta M. ; Wacker, Lukas ; Schefuß, Enno ; Peucker-Ehrenbrink, Bernhard ; Abiven, Samuel ; Schmidt, Michael W. I. ; Eglinton, Timothy I.
    Wildfires and incomplete combustion of fossil fuel produce large amounts of black carbon. Black carbon production and transport are essential components of the carbon cycle. Constraining estimates of black carbon exported from land to ocean is critical, given ongoing changes in land use and climate, which affect fire occurrence and black carbon dynamics. Here, we present an inventory of the concentration and radiocarbon content (∆14C) of particulate black carbon for 18 rivers around the globe. We find that particulate black carbon accounts for about 15.8 ± 0.9% of river particulate organic carbon, and that fluxes of particulate black carbon co-vary with river-suspended sediment, indicating that particulate black carbon export is primarily controlled by erosion. River particulate black carbon is not exclusively from modern sources but is also aged in intermediate terrestrial carbon pools in several high-latitude rivers, with ages of up to 17,000 14C years. The flux-weighted 14C average age of particulate black carbon exported to oceans is 3,700 ± 400 14C years. We estimate that the annual global flux of particulate black carbon to the ocean is 0.017 to 0.037 Pg, accounting for 4 to 32% of the annually produced black carbon. When buried in marine sediments, particulate black carbon is sequestered to form a long-term sink for CO2.
  • Article
    From soil to sea: sources and transport of organic carbon traced by tetraether lipids in the monsoonal Godavari River, India
    (European Geosciences Union, 2022-09-01) Kirkels, Frédérique M. S. A. ; Zwart, Huub M. ; Usman, Muhammed ; Hou, Suning ; Ponton, Camilo ; Giosan, Liviu ; Eglinton, Timothy I. ; Peterse, Francien
    Monsoonal rivers play an important role in the land-to-sea transport of soil-derived organic carbon (OC). However, spatial and temporal variation in the concentration, composition, and fate of this OC in these rivers remains poorly understood. We investigate soil-to-sea transport of soil OC by the Godavari River in India using glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraether (GDGT) lipids in soils, river suspended particulate matter (SPM), and riverbed sediments, as well as in a marine sediment core from the Bay of Bengal. The abundance and composition of GDGTs in SPM and sediments in the Godavari River differs between the dry and wet season. In the dry season, SPM and riverbed sediments from the whole basin contain more 6-methyl branched GDGTs (brGDGTs) than the soils. In the upper basin, where mobilisation and transport of soils is limited due to deficient rainfall and damming, contributions of 6-methyl brGDGTs in SPM and riverbed sediments are relatively high year-round, suggesting that they have an aquatic source. Aquatic brGDGT production coincides with elevated values of the isoprenoid GDGT-0  crenarchaeol ratio in SPM and riverbed sediments from the upper basin, indicating low-oxygen conditions. In the wet season, brGDGT distributions in SPM from the lower basin closely resemble those in soils, mostly from the north and east tributaries, corresponding to precipitation patterns. The brGDGT composition in SPM and sediments from the delta suggests that soil OC is only effectively transported to the Bay of Bengal in the wet season, when the river plume extends beyond the river mouth. The sediment geochemistry indicates that also the mineral particles exported by the Godavari River primarily originate from the lower basin, similar to the brGDGTs, suggesting that they are transported together. However, river depth profiles in the downstream Godavari reveal no hydrodynamic sorting effect on brGDGTs in either season, indicating that brGDGTs are not closely associated with mineral particles. The similarity of brGDGT distributions in bulk and fine-grained sediments (≤ 63 µm) further confirms the absence of selective transport mechanisms. Nevertheless, the composition of brGDGTs in a Holocene, marine sediment core near the river mouth appears substantially different from that in the modern Godavari basin, suggesting that terrestrial-derived brGDGTs are rapidly lost upon discharge into the Bay of Bengal and/or overprinted by marine in situ production. The large change in brGDGT distributions at the river–sea transition implies that this zone is key in the transfer of soil OC, as well as that of the environmental signal carried by brGDGTs from the river basin.
  • Article
    Short communication : Massive erosion in monsoonal central India linked to late Holocene land cover degradation
    (Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union, 2017-12-01) Giosan, Liviu ; Ponton, Camilo ; Usman, Muhammed ; Blusztajn, Jerzy S. ; Fuller, Dorian Q. ; Galy, Valier ; Haghipour, Negar ; Johnson, Joel E. ; McIntyre, Cameron P. ; Wacker, Lukas ; Eglinton, Timothy I.
    Soil erosion plays a crucial role in transferring sediment and carbon from land to sea, yet little is known about the rhythm and rates of soil erosion prior to the most recent few centuries. Here we reconstruct a Holocene erosional history from central India, as integrated by the Godavari River in a sediment core from the Bay of Bengal. We quantify terrigenous fluxes, fingerprint sources for the lithogenic fraction and assess the age of the exported terrigenous carbon. Taken together, our data show that the monsoon decline in the late Holocene significantly increased soil erosion and the age of exported organic carbon. This acceleration of natural erosion was later exacerbated by the Neolithic adoption and Iron Age extensification of agriculture on the Deccan Plateau. Despite a constantly elevated sea level since the middle Holocene, this erosion acceleration led to a rapid growth of the continental margin. We conclude that in monsoon conditions aridity boosts rather than suppresses sediment and carbon export, acting as a monsoon erosional pump modulated by land cover conditions.
  • Article
    Reconciling drainage and receiving basin signatures of the Godavari River system
    (Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union, 2018-06-07) Usman, Muhammed ; Kirkels, Frédérique M. S. A. ; Zwart, Huub M. ; Basu, Sayak ; Ponton, Camilo ; Blattmann, Thomas M. ; Ploetze, Michael ; Haghipour, Negar ; McIntyre, Cameron P. ; Peterse, Francien ; Lupker, Maarten ; Giosan, Liviu ; Eglinton, Timothy I.
    The modern-day Godavari River transports large amounts of sediment (170 Tg per year) and terrestrial organic carbon (OCterr; 1.5 Tg per year) from peninsular India to the Bay of Bengal. The flux and nature of OCterr is considered to have varied in response to past climate and human forcing. In order to delineate the provenance and nature of organic matter (OM) exported by the fluvial system and establish links to sedimentary records accumulating on its adjacent continental margin, the stable and radiogenic isotopic composition of bulk OC, abundance and distribution of long-chain fatty acids (LCFAs), sedimentological properties (e.g. grain size, mineral surface area, etc.) of fluvial (riverbed and riverbank) sediments and soils from the Godavari basin were analysed and these characteristics were compared to those of a sediment core retrieved from the continental slope depocenter. Results show that river sediments from the upper catchment exhibit higher total organic carbon (TOC) contents than those from the lower part of the basin. The general relationship between TOC and sedimentological parameters (i.e. mineral surface area and grain size) of the sediments suggests that sediment mineralogy, largely driven by provenance, plays an important role in the stabilization of OM during transport along the river axis, and in the preservation of OM exported by the Godavari to the Bay of Bengal. The stable carbon isotopic (δ13C) characteristics of river sediments and soils indicate that the upper mainstream and its tributaries drain catchments exhibiting more 13C enriched carbon than the lower stream, resulting from the regional vegetation gradient and/or net balance between the upper (C4-dominated plants) and lower (C3-dominated plants) catchments. The radiocarbon contents of organic carbon (Δ14COC) in deep soils and eroding riverbanks suggests these are likely sources of "old" or pre-aged carbon to the Godavari River that increasingly dominates the late Holocene portion of the offshore sedimentary record. While changes in water flow and sediment transport resulting from recent dam construction have drastically impacted the flux, loci, and composition of OC exported from the modern Godavari basin, complicating reconciliation of modern-day river basin geochemistry with that recorded in continental margin sediments, such investigations provide important insights into climatic and anthropogenic controls on OC cycling and burial.