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Temperature-controlled organic carbon mineralization in lake sediments

Nature volume 466, pages 478–481 (2010)Cite this article

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A Corrigendum to this article was published on 26 August 2010

Abstract

Peatlands, soils and the ocean floor are well-recognized as sites of organic carbon accumulation and represent important global carbon sinks1,2. Although the annual burial of organic carbon in lakes and reservoirs exceeds that of ocean sediments3, these inland waters are components of the global carbon cycle that receive only limited attention4,5,6. Of the organic carbon that is being deposited onto the sediments, a certain proportion will be mineralized and the remainder will be buried over geological timescales. Here we assess the relationship between sediment organic carbon mineralization and temperature in a cross-system survey of boreal lakes in Sweden, and with input from a compilation of published data from a wide range of lakes that differ with respect to climate, productivity and organic carbon source. We find that the mineralization of organic carbon in lake sediments exhibits a strongly positive relationship with temperature, which suggests that warmer water temperatures lead to more mineralization and less organic carbon burial. Assuming that future organic carbon delivery to the lake sediments will be similar to that under present-day conditions, we estimate that temperature increases following the latest scenarios presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change7 could result in a 4–27 per cent (0.9–6.4 Tg C yr−1) decrease in annual organic carbon burial in boreal lakes.

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Figure 1: Temperature-dependent OC mineralization in lake sediments.
Figure 2: Mineralization and burial of OC in lakes.
Figure 3: Organic carbon burial decrease.

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Acknowledgements

The study was part of the research environment LEREC (Lake Ecosystem Response to Environmental Change), financially supported by FORMAS (the Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning). Additional funding from VR (the Swedish Research Council) to L.J.T. and to D.B., and from FORMAS to S.S., is acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Ecology and Evolution, Limnology, Uppsala University, Norbyvägen 18D, SE-752 36 Uppsala, Sweden,

    Cristian Gudasz, Kristin Steger, Katrin Premke, Sebastian Sobek & Lars J. Tranvik

  2. Department of Thematic Studies—Water and Environmental Studies, Linköping University, Linköping, SE-58662, Sweden

    David Bastviken

Authors
  1. Cristian Gudasz
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  6. Lars J. Tranvik
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Contributions

C.G., D.B., L.J.T, K.S. and K.P. contributed to study design. C.G., D.B., S.S., K.S. and K.P. contributed to sampling and analysis of data. C.G., D.B., S.S. and L.J.T. wrote the paper. All authors commented on the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Cristian Gudasz.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Supplementary Information

This file contains Supplementary Methods, Supplementary Table 1, a Supplementary Discussion, References and Supplementary Data and References for Figures 1, 2 and 3 in the main paper. (PDF 412 kb)

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Gudasz, C., Bastviken, D., Steger, K. et al. Temperature-controlled organic carbon mineralization in lake sediments. Nature 466, 478–481 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature09186

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