25
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: not found

      Riverine export of aged terrestrial organic matter to the North Atlantic Ocean.

      1 ,
      Nature
      Springer Science and Business Media LLC

      Read this article at

      ScienceOpenPublisherPubMed
      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          Global riverine discharge of organic matter represents a substantial source of terrestrial dissolved and particulate organic carbon to the oceans. This input from rivers is, by itself, more than large enough to account for the apparent steady-state replacement times of 4,00-6,000 yr for oceanic dissolved organic carbon. But paradoxically, terrestrial organic matter, derived from land plants, is not detected in seawater and sediments in quantities that correspond to its inputs. Here we present natural 14C and 13C data from four rivers that discharge to the western North Atlantic Ocean and find that these rivers are sources of old (14C-depleted) and young (14C-enriched) terrestrial dissolved organic carbon, and of predominantly old terrestrial particulate organic carbon. These findings contrast with limited earlier data that suggested terrestrial organic matter transported by rivers might be generally enriched in 14C from nuclear testing, and hence newly produced. We also find that much of the young dissolved organic carbon can be selectively degraded over the residence times of river and coastal waters, leaving an even older and more refractory component for oceanic export. Thus, pre-ageing and degradation may alter significantly the structure, distributions and quantities of terrestrial organic matter before its delivery to the oceans.

          Related collections

          Author and article information

          Journal
          Nature
          Nature
          Springer Science and Business Media LLC
          0028-0836
          0028-0836
          Jan 25 2001
          : 409
          : 6819
          Affiliations
          [1 ] School of Marine Science, College of William and Mary, Gloucester Point, Virginia 23062, USA. praymond@mbl.edu
          Article
          35054034
          10.1038/35054034
          11206542
          e01502aa-4174-480b-945e-49034e7daf8d
          History

          Comments

          Comment on this article