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Organic carbon decomposition rates controlled by water retention time across inland waters

Nature Geoscience volume 9, pages 501–504 (2016)Cite this article

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Abstract

The loss of organic carbon during passage through the continuum of inland waters from soils to the sea is a critical component of the global carbon cycle1,2,3. Yet, the amount of organic carbon mineralized and released to the atmosphere during its transport remains an open question2,4,5,6, hampered by the absence of a common predictor of organic carbon decay rates1,7. Here we analyse a compilation of existing field and laboratory measurements of organic carbon decay rates and water residence times across a wide range of aquatic ecosystems and climates. We find a negative relationship between the rate of organic carbon decay and water retention time across systems, entailing a decrease in organic carbon reactivity along the continuum of inland waters. We find that the half-life of organic carbon is short in inland waters (2.5 ± 4.7 yr) compared to terrestrial soils and marine ecosystems, highlighting that freshwaters are hotspots of organic carbon degradation. Finally, we evaluate the response of organic carbon decay rates to projected changes in runoff8. We calculate that regions projected to become drier or wetter as the global climate warms will experience changes in organic carbon decay rates of up to about 10%, which illustrates the influence of hydrological variability on the inland waters carbon cycle.

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Figure 1: Regression between the log-transformed water retention time (WRT) and decay rates of organic carbon (OC).
Figure 2: Comparison of the relationship for inland waters and marine sediments.
Figure 3: Half-lives of organic carbon in different systems.
Figure 4: Global distribution of percentage variation in OC decay rates based on the runoff changes scenario for a 2 °C increase in temperature.

Change history

  • 02 June 2016

    In the version of the Letter originally published, in the 'Predicted distribution changes in WRT and k' section of the Methods, the equation describing 'R' was incorrect and the numerator should have been 'DW'. This has been corrected in all versions of the Letter.

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Acknowledgements

Discussions with M. Futter, B. Obrador and C. Gudasz improved the manuscript. A. M. Kellerman commented on an early version of the manuscript. We thank B. Koehler for the data set on litter decay. We thank J. Schewe for his assistance with the interpretation of runoff change maps. The study was funded by grants from the Swedish Research Council, the Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning (FORMAS) and the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation to L.J.T. N.C. holds a Wenner-Gren foundation post-doctoral fellowship (2014–2016, Sweden). The participation of R.M. was supported by project REMEDIATION (CGL2014-57215-C4-2-R), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Limnology/Department of Ecology and Genetics, Uppsala University, 75236 Uppsala, Sweden

    Núria Catalán & Lars. J. Tranvik

  2. Catalan Institute for Water Research (ICRA), Emili Grahit 101, 17003 Girona, Spain

    Rafael Marcé

  3. Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 75007 Uppsala, Sweden

    Dolly N. Kothawala

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  1. Núria Catalán
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  4. Lars. J. Tranvik
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Contributions

N.C., D.N.K. and L.J.T conceived the study; N.C. performed the bibliographic review and the statistical analysis, with comments and suggestions from D.N.K., R.M. and L.J.T.; R.M. provided data on global accumulated runoff and performed the global analysis; N.C. wrote the manuscript with significant contributions from D.N.K., R.M. and L.J.T.

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Correspondence to Núria Catalán.

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Catalán, N., Marcé, R., Kothawala, D. et al. Organic carbon decomposition rates controlled by water retention time across inland waters. Nature Geosci 9, 501–504 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2720

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