What is it about?
Inorganic carbon in cave streams can be dissolved in the water, suspended in the water, and bounced along the cave stream base as pebbles and cobbles. We have shown for the first time that carbon carried in the pebbles and cobbles is about 10% of the total inorganic carbon that moves through a cave stream. Previously, this carbon source was neglected in the counting of carbon. We used cobble tracers, flow measurements, and geochemical techniques to count the carbon as dissolved, suspended, and bedload over a one-year period.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
Previous studies that neglected to account for the movement of inorganic as pebbles and cobbles have underestimated the amount of carbon that can be removed from karst settings.
Perspectives
We hope that fellow researchers begin to account for inorganic carbon that is carried as pebbles and cobbles in future studies of karst geomorphology and in carbon cycling studies.
Carol Wicks
Louisiana State University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Flux of Inorganic Carbon as Dissolved, Suspended, and Bed Loads through a Karstic Basin, Water, March 2019, MDPI AG,
DOI: 10.3390/w11040644.
You can read the full text:
Resources
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
