Climate and atmospheric deposition drive the inter-annual variability and long-term trend of dissolved organic carbon flux in the conterminous United States

Wei, Xinyuan; Hayes, Daniel J.; Fernandez, Ivan; Fraver, Shawn; Zhao, Jianheng; Weiskittel, Aaron

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.145448

Climate and atmospheric deposition drive the inter-annual variability and long-term trend of dissolved organic carbon flux in the conterminous United States

Journal Article · Thu Jan 28 00:00:00 EST 2021 · Science of the Total Environment

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.145448· OSTI ID:1811372

Wei, Xinyuan ^[1]; Hayes, Daniel J. ^[2]; Fernandez, Ivan ^[2]; Fraver, Shawn ^[2]; Zhao, Jianheng ^[2]; Weiskittel, Aaron ^[2]

Univ. of Maine, Orono, ME (United States); Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
Univ. of Maine, Orono, ME (United States)

The lateral flux of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) from soils to inland waters and ultimately to the ocean represents a fundamental component of the global carbon cycle. To estimate the DOC flux, we developed an empirical terrestrial-aquatic DOC fluxes model (TAF-DOC). TAF-DOC incorporates various environmental factors (e.g., meteorology, sulfur, and nitrogen deposition) that to-date have not been comprehensively considered or well-represented in existing modeling frameworks. TAF-DOC was applied to estimate spatial-temporal patterns of DOC flux and potential fates across the conterminous United States during the 1985 to 2018 time period. Our results suggest that TAF-DOC successfully characterized spatial-temporal of DOC flux. As expected, the interannual pattern of DOC flux was strongly regulated by precipitation, but the long-term trend was significantly influenced by the rate of atmospheric wet sulfur deposition. From 1985 to 2018, TAF-DOC estimated DOC loading from terrestrial to aquatic ecosystems in the conterminous United States to be 33.5 ± 2.2 TgC per year, which was roughly 0.39–0.49% of total soil organic carbon stock estimates. The dominant fate of terrestrially-derived DOC was delivery to the coastal ocean in riverine export (41%), with another 21% buried in sediment and the remaining 12.8 ± 0.4 TgC per year (38%) returned to the atmosphere through outgassing from inland waters. Finally, assuming the quantities of DOC sediment burial and export to the ocean as an annual sink of terrestrially-derived carbon, budget inventories and models that do not account for DOC flux in the conterminous United States will underestimate the net annual carbon sink by as much as 5.5–6.4%.

View Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Research Organization:: Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDA; USDOE Office of Science (SC)

Grant/Contract Number:: AC05-00OR22725

OSTI ID:: 1811372

Journal Information:: Science of the Total Environment, Journal Name: Science of the Total Environment Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 771; ISSN 0048-9697

Publisher:: ElsevierCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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