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Sources, sinks and subsidies : terrestrial carbon storage in mid-latitude fjords

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Date
14/12/2017
Author
Smeaton, Craig
Austin, William E. N.
Keywords
Carbon
Fjord
Sediment
Land-sea interactions
Terrestrial
Isotope
GB Physical geography
DAS
BDC
R2C
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Abstract
Fjords are recognized as globally important sites for the burial and long-term storage of carbon (C) within sediments. The proximity of fjords to the terrestrial environment in combination with their geomorphology and hydrography results in the fjordic sediments being subsidized with organic carbon (OC) from the terrestrial environment. It has been well documented that terrestrial OC (OCterr) is an important component of coastal sediments, yet our understanding of the quantity of OCterr stored in these sediments remains poorly constrained. Utilizing Bayesian isotopic sediment fingerprinting techniques to the surface sediments of Loch Sunart, we estimate that 42.0 ± 10.1% of the OC is terrestrial in origin. Through combining these outputs with sedimentary OC stock estimates, we have calculated that the surface sediments (0–15 cm) hold 0.1 megaton (Mt) OCterr and estimate that the postglacial sediment held within the fjord contains 3.96 Mt OCterr. When these totals are compared to the quantity of OC stored in the adjacent terrestrial environment, it is clear that the fjord's catchment stores a greater amount of OCterr in the form of vegetation and soil. Though when normalized for area the results suggest that the marine sediments are a more effective long-term store of OCterr than the adjacent terrestrial environment. This striking result highlights the importance of the terrestrial environment as a source of OC to the coastal ocean and that the OCterr subsidy to the marine sediments is a significant mechanism for the long-term storage of OC in coastal marine sediments.
Citation
Smeaton , C & Austin , W E N 2017 , ' Sources, sinks and subsidies : terrestrial carbon storage in mid-latitude fjords ' , Journal of Geophysical Research - Biogeosciences , vol. 122 , no. 11 , pp. 2754-2768 . https://doi.org/10.1002/2017JG003952
Publication
Journal of Geophysical Research - Biogeosciences
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1002/2017JG003952
ISSN
2169-8961
Type
Journal article
Rights
©2017. The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Description
This work was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council (Grant Number: NE/L501852/1) with additional support from the NERC Life Science Mass Spectrometry Facility (CEH_L_098_11_2015) and the NERC Geophysical Equipment Facility (NGGFSC Minor Loan 1031).
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URL
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2017JG003952#support-information-section
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/12000

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