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Study Reveals How Rivers Regulate Global Carbon Cycle
Last edited Wed May 13, 2015, 06:20 PM - Edit history (1)
http://www.whoi.edu/news-release/river-carbon[font face=Serif][font size=5]Study Reveals How Rivers Regulate Global Carbon Cycle[/font]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 13, 2015
(508) 289-3340
[font size=3]Humans concerned about climate change are working to find ways of capturing excess carbon dioxide (CO₂ ) from the atmosphere and sequestering it in the Earth. But Nature has its own methods for the removal and long-term storage of carbon, including the world’s river systems, which transport decaying organic material and eroded rock from land to the ocean.
While river transport of carbon to the ocean is not on a scale that will bail humans out of our CO₂ problem, we don’t actually know how much carbon the world’s rivers routinely flush into the ocean – an important piece of the global carbon cycle.
But in a study published May 14 in the journal Nature, scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) calculated the first direct estimate of how much and in what form organic carbon is exported to the ocean by rivers. The estimate will help modelers predict how the carbon export from global rivers may shift as Earth’s climate changes.
“The world’s rivers act as Earth’s circulatory system, flushing carbon from land to the ocean and helping reduce the amount that returns to the atmosphere in the form of heat-trapping carbon dioxide,” said lead author and geochemist Valier Galy. “Some of that carbon—‘new’ carbon—is from decomposed plant and soil material that is washed into the river and then out to sea. But some of it comes from carbon that has long been stored in the environment in the form of rocks— ‘old’ carbon—that have been eroded by weather and the force of the river.”
…[/font][/font]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 13, 2015
(508) 289-3340
[font size=3]Humans concerned about climate change are working to find ways of capturing excess carbon dioxide (CO₂ ) from the atmosphere and sequestering it in the Earth. But Nature has its own methods for the removal and long-term storage of carbon, including the world’s river systems, which transport decaying organic material and eroded rock from land to the ocean.
While river transport of carbon to the ocean is not on a scale that will bail humans out of our CO₂ problem, we don’t actually know how much carbon the world’s rivers routinely flush into the ocean – an important piece of the global carbon cycle.
But in a study published May 14 in the journal Nature, scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) calculated the first direct estimate of how much and in what form organic carbon is exported to the ocean by rivers. The estimate will help modelers predict how the carbon export from global rivers may shift as Earth’s climate changes.
“The world’s rivers act as Earth’s circulatory system, flushing carbon from land to the ocean and helping reduce the amount that returns to the atmosphere in the form of heat-trapping carbon dioxide,” said lead author and geochemist Valier Galy. “Some of that carbon—‘new’ carbon—is from decomposed plant and soil material that is washed into the river and then out to sea. But some of it comes from carbon that has long been stored in the environment in the form of rocks— ‘old’ carbon—that have been eroded by weather and the force of the river.”
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3 replies
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But what about all the old stuff. Wonder how much carbon the ocean can hold and where it keeps it?
