Significant efflux of carbon dioxide from streams and rivers in the United States

Current estimates of carbon dioxide evasion from inland waters are based on incomplete spatial coverage. Streams and rivers in the United States release 97 Tg of carbon to the atmosphere each year, according to an analysis of chemical and morphological data. The evasion of carbon dioxide from inland...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature geoscience Vol. 4; no. 12; pp. 839 - 842
Main Authors: Butman, David, Raymond, Peter A.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 01.12.2011
Nature Publishing Group
Subjects:
704/106/35
704/106/47
Alkalinity
Atmosphere
Carbon dioxide
Drainage patterns
Earth and Environmental Science
Earth Sciences
Earth System Sciences
Freshwater
Freshwater lakes
Geochemistry
Geology
Geophysics/Geodesy
Inland waters
letter
Rivers
Streams
Surface area
Temperature measurement
Waterways
USA
ISSN:1752-0894, 1752-0908
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Summary:Current estimates of carbon dioxide evasion from inland waters are based on incomplete spatial coverage. Streams and rivers in the United States release 97 Tg of carbon to the atmosphere each year, according to an analysis of chemical and morphological data. The evasion of carbon dioxide from inland waters was only recently included in assessments of the global carbon budget 1 , 2 , 3 . Present estimates of carbon dioxide release from global freshwater systems, including lakes and wetlands, range from 0.7 to 3.3 Pg C yr −1 (refs  1 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 ). However, these estimates are based on incomplete spatial coverage of carbon dioxide evasion, and an inadequate understanding of the factors controlling the efflux of carbon dioxide across large drainage networks 6 . Here, we estimate the amount of carbon degassed from streams and rivers in the United States using measurements of temperature, alkalinity and pH, together with high-resolution data on the morphology and surface area of these waterways. We show that streams and rivers in the US are supersaturated with carbon dioxide when compared with the atmosphere, emitting 97±32 Tg carbon each year. We further show that regionally, carbon dioxide evasion from streams and rivers is positively correlated with annual precipitation, which we attribute to climatic regulation of stream surface area, and the flushing of carbon dioxide from soils. Scaling our analysis from the US to temperate rivers between 25° N and 50° N, we estimate a release of around 0.5 Pg carbon to the atmosphere each year.
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ISSN:1752-0894
1752-0908
DOI:10.1038/ngeo1294