Climate and atmospheric deposition drive the inter-annual variability and long-term trend of dissolved organic carbon flux in the conterminous United States
Abstract
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 tomore »
- Authors:
-
- Univ. of Maine, Orono, ME (United States); Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
- Univ. of Maine, Orono, ME (United States)
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC); USDA
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1811372
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC05-00OR22725; 2014-67003-22070
- Resource Type:
- Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Name:
- Science of the Total Environment
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Volume: 771; Journal Issue: 1; Journal ID: ISSN 0048-9697
- Publisher:
- Elsevier
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES; atmospheric deposition; carbon uptake; climate change; dissolved organic carbon; modeling; terrestrial-aquatic DOC flux; watershed
Citation Formats
Wei, Xinyuan, Hayes, Daniel J., Fernandez, Ivan, Fraver, Shawn, Zhao, Jianheng, and Weiskittel, Aaron. Climate and atmospheric deposition drive the inter-annual variability and long-term trend of dissolved organic carbon flux in the conterminous United States. United States: N. p., 2021.
Web. doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.145448.
Wei, Xinyuan, Hayes, Daniel J., Fernandez, Ivan, Fraver, Shawn, Zhao, Jianheng, & Weiskittel, Aaron. Climate and atmospheric deposition drive the inter-annual variability and long-term trend of dissolved organic carbon flux in the conterminous United States. United States. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.145448
Wei, Xinyuan, Hayes, Daniel J., Fernandez, Ivan, Fraver, Shawn, Zhao, Jianheng, and Weiskittel, Aaron. Thu .
"Climate and atmospheric deposition drive the inter-annual variability and long-term trend of dissolved organic carbon flux in the conterminous United States". United States. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.145448. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1811372.
@article{osti_1811372,
title = {Climate and atmospheric deposition drive the inter-annual variability and long-term trend of dissolved organic carbon flux in the conterminous United States},
author = {Wei, Xinyuan and Hayes, Daniel J. and Fernandez, Ivan and Fraver, Shawn and Zhao, Jianheng and Weiskittel, Aaron},
abstractNote = {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%.},
doi = {10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.145448},
journal = {Science of the Total Environment},
number = 1,
volume = 771,
place = {United States},
year = {Thu Jan 28 00:00:00 EST 2021},
month = {Thu Jan 28 00:00:00 EST 2021}
}
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