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    Hydrologic control of carbon cycling and aged carbon discharge in the Congo River basin

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    Schefuss_etal_Nature_Geoscience_2016.pdf (275.9Kb)
    Date
    2016-07
    Author
    Schefuß, Enno  Concept link
    Eglinton, Timothy I.  Concept link
    Spencer-Jones, Charlotte L.  Concept link
    Rullkötter, Jürgen  Concept link
    De Pol-Holz, Ricardo  Concept link
    Talbot, Helen M.  Concept link
    Grootes, Pieter M.  Concept link
    Schneider, Ralph R.  Concept link
    Metadata
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    Citable URI
    https://hdl.handle.net/1912/8465
    As published
    https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2778
    Abstract
    The age of organic material discharged by rivers provides information about its sources and carbon cycling processes within watersheds. While elevated ages in fluvially-transported organic matter are usually explained by erosion of soils and sediments deposits it is commonly assumed that mainly young organic material is discharged from flat tropical watersheds due to their extensive plant cover and rapid carbon turnover. Here we present compound-specific radiocarbon data of terrigenous organic fractions from a sedimentary archive offshore the Congo River in conjunction with molecular markers for methane-producing land cover reflecting wetland extent. We find that the Congo River has been discharging aged organic matter for several thousand years with apparently increasing ages from the Mid- to the Late Holocene. This suggests that aged organic matter in modern samples is concealed by radiocarbon from atmospheric nuclear weapons testing. By comparison to indicators for past rainfall changes we detect a systematic control of organic matter sequestration and release by continental hydrology mediating temporary carbon storage in wetlands. As aridification also leads to exposure and rapid remineralization of large amounts of previously stored labile organic matter we infer that this process may cause a profound direct climate feedback currently underestimated in carbon cycle assessments.
    Description
    Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2016. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Nature Publishing Group for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Nature Geoscience 9 (2016): 687-690, doi:10.1038/ngeo2778.
    Collections
    • Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry (MC&G)
    Suggested Citation
    Preprint: Schefuß, Enno, Eglinton, Timothy I., Spencer-Jones, Charlotte L., Rullkötter, Jürgen, De Pol-Holz, Ricardo, Talbot, Helen M., Grootes, Pieter M., Schneider, Ralph R., "Hydrologic control of carbon cycling and aged carbon discharge in the Congo River basin", 2016-07, https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2778, https://hdl.handle.net/1912/8465
     

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