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| Titel |
Regional CO2 flux estimates from estuarine environments: a reactive-transport modeling approach |
| VerfasserIn |
Nicolas Goossens, Goulven G. Laruelle, Sandra Arndt, Pierre Regnier |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2013
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 15 (2013) |
| Datensatznummer |
250083696
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| Zusammenfassung |
| Estuaries are key components of the land-ocean continuum and play an important role in the global carbon cycle. Large amounts of terrestrial carbon are channelled through estuaries before reaching the ocean. During estuarine transit, numerous biogeochemical processes transform the carbon flux, resulting in a significant CO2 evasion flux to the atmosphere. The global estuarine CO2 outgassing is evaluated at 0.25±0.25 PgC yr-1. Yet, these estimates rely on the extrapolation of local measurements and the scarcity of such measurements conducts to large uncertainties. Furthermore, the global quantification is biased towards anthropogenically impacted estuarine systems located in industrialized countries.
Here we provide a first assessment of the estuarine carbon budget and, in particular, CO2 evasion fluxes using a generic and effective reactive-transport model (RTM) approach that is applicable at the regional scale. The new approach is based on the mutual dependency between estuarine geometry and hydrodynamics and uses idealized estuarine geometries. Global river databases (GLORICH) and watershed model outputs (GlobalNEWS) are used to quantify input fluxes for the generic estuarine model. The new modeling approach provides not only a quantification of the estuarine carbon budget, but also allows disentangling the relative contributions of biogeochemical and physical processes to estuarine CO2 emissions.
Preliminary results are presented for the North Eastern coast of the US. Model results are consistent with observations and indicate that the net heterotrophy of these systems is the major contributor to estuarine CO2 fluxes (>50%), followed by outgassing of supersaturated riverine waters and nitrification. Results also highlight the strong seasonality in the biogeochemical dynamics. In addition, significant heterogeneity is observed across different estuaries due to spatial heterogeneities in climate forcing, estuarine geometry or riverine input fluxes. The proposed RTM approach is suitable to capture this spatial and temporal variability and offers promising avenues not only to derive robust regional estuarine CO2 budgets, but also to carry projections constrained by future climate and land-use change scenarios. |
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