What is it about?
Particulate organic matter in Arctic rivers has previously thought to be mostly from vulnerable northern high-latitude soils like permafrost. Here, using eight years of data from the six biggest Arctic rivers, we show that instead much of that organic matter comes from aquatic biomass produced in the river systems themselves. Organic matter from aquatic biomass is more likely to fuel food webs than organic matter than soils, so Arctic Ocean food webs may be benefiting from this previously unrecognized export.
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Photo by Roma Ryabchenko on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Frozen Arctic permafrost soils currently store twice as much carbon as is presently in the atmosphere. Since the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, that carbon is being released as soils thaw. To prepare for how that released carbon will impact greenhouse gas emissions and climate change it is critical to understand what happens to that carbon after release. It has previously been believed that most particles of carbon transported in Arctic rivers came from warming soils, but here we show that the contribution of recently produced aquatic biomass has been underestimated. This large contribution of in situ riverine production suggests a need to reevaluate how much soil carbon reaches rivers, the fate of Arctic riverine carbon, and its role in global carbon cycling.
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This page is a summary of: Aquatic biomass is a major source to particulate organic matter export in large Arctic rivers, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, March 2023, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2209883120.
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