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Anthropogenic perturbation of the carbon fluxes from land to ocean

Nature Geoscience volume 6, pages 597–607 (2013)Cite this article

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Abstract

A substantial amount of the atmospheric carbon taken up on land through photosynthesis and chemical weathering is transported laterally along the aquatic continuum from upland terrestrial ecosystems to the ocean. So far, global carbon budget estimates have implicitly assumed that the transformation and lateral transport of carbon along this aquatic continuum has remained unchanged since pre-industrial times. A synthesis of published work reveals the magnitude of present-day lateral carbon fluxes from land to ocean, and the extent to which human activities have altered these fluxes. We show that anthropogenic perturbation may have increased the flux of carbon to inland waters by as much as 1.0 Pg C yr−1 since pre-industrial times, mainly owing to enhanced carbon export from soils. Most of this additional carbon input to upstream rivers is either emitted back to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide (∼0.4 Pg C yr−1) or sequestered in sediments (∼0.5 Pg C yr−1) along the continuum of freshwater bodies, estuaries and coastal waters, leaving only a perturbation carbon input of ∼0.1 Pg C yr−1 to the open ocean. According to our analysis, terrestrial ecosystems store ∼0.9 Pg C yr−1 at present, which is in agreement with results from forest inventories but significantly differs from the figure of 1.5 Pg C yr−1 previously estimated when ignoring changes in lateral carbon fluxes. We suggest that carbon fluxes along the land–ocean aquatic continuum need to be included in global carbon dioxide budgets.

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Figure 1: Global carbon budget and its anthropogenic perturbation.
Figure 2: Density of pCO2 data for the continuum of land–ocean aquatic systems.
Figure 3: Global budget of anthropogenic CO2.

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Acknowledgements

This paper is the outcome of the workshop 'Exploring knowledge gaps along the global carbon route: a hitchhiker's guide for a boundless cycle' held in Eprave, Belgium, in November 2011. The authors would like to thank S. Bonneville, L. Chou, P. Cox, H. Durr, T. Eglinton, K. Fleischer, J. Kaplan, T. Kleinen, D. Dan Li, A. Mouchet, H. Nick, C. Pallud, C. Prentice, D. Schimel, M. Serrano, J-L. Tison, P. Van Cappellen, C. Volta and J. Zhou for their input during the workshop. The workshop was officially endorsed by the Global Carbon Project (GCP) and by the Analysis, Integration and Modeling of the Earth System (AIMES) of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) and received financial support from the government of the Brussels-Capital region (Innoviris — Brains Back to Brussels award to P.R.), the Walloon Agency for Air and Climate (AWAC), the Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique of Belgium (FNRS), The Belgian Federal Science Policy Office (BELSPO), the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium), the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) Center-in-Development Award to Utrecht University (The Netherlands), the University of Waterloo (Canada) and the University of Exeter (UK). The research leading to these results received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007–2013) under grant agreement number 283080, project GEOCARBON.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, CP160/02, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Bruxelles, 1050, Belgium

    Pierre Regnier, Goulven G. Laruelle, Ronny Lauerwald & Nicolas Goossens

  2. College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences, University of Exeter, Exeter, EX4 4QF, UK

    Pierre Friedlingstein

  3. Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et l'Environnement, Gif-sur-Yvette, 91190, France

    Philippe Ciais & Sebastiaan Luyssaert

  4. Department of Oceanography, School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, University of Hawai'i at Mãnoa, Honolulu, 96822, Hawaii, USA

    Fred T. Mackenzie

  5. Department of Environmental Sciences, Environmental Physics, Institute of Biogeochemistry and Pollutant Dynamics, ETH Zürich, Zurich, 8092, Switzerland

    Nicolas Gruber

  6. Departement Biologie, Universiteit Antwerpen, Wilrijk, Belgium, 2160

    Ivan A. Janssens

  7. Institute for Biogeochemistry and Marine Chemistry, KlimaCampus, Hamburg, D-20146, Germany

    Ronny Lauerwald & Jens Hartmann

  8. Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, 92093-0202, California, USA

    Andreas J. Andersson

  9. School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, University Road, Bristol, BS8 1SS, UK

    Sandra Arndt

  10. Department of Marine Sciences, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 27599, North Carolina, USA

    Carol Arnosti

  11. University of Liège, Chemical Oceanography Unit, Institut de Physique (B5), Liège, B-4000, Belgium

    Alberto V. Borges

  12. GEOMAR Helmholtz-Zentrum für Ozeanforschung Kiel, Wischhofstraβe 1-3, Kiel, 24148, Germany

    Andrew W. Dale

  13. Department of Geography, University of Exeter, Exeter, EX4 4RJ, UK

    Angela Gallego-Sala

  14. Géosciences Environnement Toulouse, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées, Université Toulouse III, Toulouse, 31400, France

    Yves Goddéris

  15. Geophysical Institute, University of Bergen, Bergen, N-5007, Norway

    Christoph Heinze

  16. Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, Bergen, N-5007, Norway

    Christoph Heinze

  17. Uni Bjerknes Centre, Uni Research, Bergen, N-5007, Norway

    Christoph Heinze

  18. Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, 20146, Germany

    Tatiana Ilyina

  19. Climate and Environmental Physics, Physics Institute, and Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, Bern, CH-3012, Switzerland

    Fortunat Joos & Renato Spahni

  20. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, 90089, California, USA

    Douglas E. LaRowe

  21. Agroscope Research Station ART, Reckenholzstrasse 191, Zurich, 8046, Switzerland

    Jens Leifeld

  22. Royal Netherlands Institute of Sea Research, Yerseke, 4401 NT, The Netherlands

    Filip J. R. Meysman

  23. Department of Analytical and Environmental Chemistry, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussel, 1050, Belgium

    Filip J. R. Meysman

  24. Laboratoire de Physique Atmosphérique et Planétaire, Université de Liège, Liège, B-4000, Belgium

    Guy Munhoven

  25. Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, New Haven, 06511, Connecticut, USA

    Peter A. Raymond

  26. School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK

    Parvadha Suntharalingam

  27. Department of Environmental Microbiology, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Leipzig, 04318, Germany

    Martin Thullner

Authors
  1. Pierre Regnier
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  2. Pierre Friedlingstein
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  28. Parvadha Suntharalingam
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  29. Martin Thullner
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Contributions

P.R. and P.F. initiated the Eprave workshop that led to this paper. P.R. coordinated and participated at all stages of the conception and writing of the paper. P.F., P.C., F.T.M. and N.G. were central to the conception of the paper and to the writing of the manuscript. I.A.J. proposed the overall design of Fig. 3. G.G.L. and R.L. produced Fig. 2, using the GloRiCh database for inland waters assembled by J. Hartmann and co-workers. S.L. took a leading role in the quantification of the terrestrial ecosystem budget. All other authors contributed to specific aspects of the budget analysis and commented on various versions of the manuscript. F.T.M. was instrumental to the genesis of this paper through his pioneering work in the field.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Pierre Regnier.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Regnier, P., Friedlingstein, P., Ciais, P. et al. Anthropogenic perturbation of the carbon fluxes from land to ocean. Nature Geosci 6, 597–607 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1830

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1830

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