Global fjords as transitory reservoirs of labile organic carbon modulated by organo-mineral interactions

Xingqian  Cui; Alfonso  Mucci; Thomas Bianchi; Ding  He; Derrick  Vaughn; Elizabeth  Williams; Chuning  Wang; Craig Smeaton; Katarzyna  Koziorowska-Makuch; Johan Faust; Alain  Plante; Brad  Rosenheim

doi:10.1126/sciadv.add0610

Global fjords as transitory reservoirs of labile organic carbon modulated by organo-mineral interactions

Xingqian Cui^*, Alfonso Mucci, Thomas Bianchi, Ding He, Derrick Vaughn, Elizabeth Williams, Chuning Wang, Craig Smeaton, Katarzyna Koziorowska-Makuch, Johan Faust, Alain Plante, Brad Rosenheim

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

The global carbon cycle is strongly modulated by organic carbon (OC) sequestration and decomposition. Whereas the extent of OC sequestration is relatively well-constrained in marine sedimentary basins, there are few quantitative estimates of its susceptibility to decomposition. Fjords are widely distributed hotspots of sedimentation, and currently account for 11% of annual OC burial in marine sediments. Here, we adopt fjords as model systems to investigate the reactivity of sedimentary OC by assessing the distribution of the activation energy (termed E) required to break OC covalent bonds. Our results reveal that OC in fjord sediments is more labile than that in global sediments, which is governed by unique OC provenance and organo-mineral interactions. We estimated that 61±16% of the sedimentary OC in fjords is degradable. Once this OC is remobilized and remineralized during glacial periods (sea level lowstands), the CO₂ produced could counterbalance up to 50 ppm of atmospheric CO₂ decrease in glacial times, making fjords critical actors in dampening glacial-interglacial climate fluctuations through negative carbon cycling loops.

Original language	English
Article number	eadd0610
Number of pages	12
Journal	Science Advances
Volume	8
Issue number	46
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.add0610
Publication status	Published - 18 Nov 2022

Keywords

Fjords
Carbon cycle
Radiocarbon
Ramped pyrolysis oxidation-radiocarbon analysis (RPO-14C)
Ramped combustion-evolved CO2 gas analysis (RC-EGA)

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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sciadv.add0610
Copyright © 2022 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Final published version, 1.06 MBLicence: CC BY

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@article{6b191f4031a5409a8314a7f1a7d8107c,

title = "Global fjords as transitory reservoirs of labile organic carbon modulated by organo-mineral interactions",

abstract = "The global carbon cycle is strongly modulated by organic carbon (OC) sequestration and decomposition. Whereas the extent of OC sequestration is relatively well-constrained in marine sedimentary basins, there are few quantitative estimates of its susceptibility to decomposition. Fjords are widely distributed hotspots of sedimentation, and currently account for 11% of annual OC burial in marine sediments. Here, we adopt fjords as model systems to investigate the reactivity of sedimentary OC by assessing the distribution of the activation energy (termed E) required to break OC covalent bonds. Our results reveal that OC in fjord sediments is more labile than that in global sediments, which is governed by unique OC provenance and organo-mineral interactions. We estimated that 61±16% of the sedimentary OC in fjords is degradable. Once this OC is remobilized and remineralized during glacial periods (sea level lowstands), the CO2 produced could counterbalance up to 50 ppm of atmospheric CO2 decrease in glacial times, making fjords critical actors in dampening glacial-interglacial climate fluctuations through negative carbon cycling loops.",

keywords = "Fjords, Carbon cycle, Radiocarbon, Ramped pyrolysis oxidation-radiocarbon analysis (RPO-14C), Ramped combustion-evolved CO2 gas analysis (RC-EGA)",

author = "Xingqian Cui and Alfonso Mucci and Thomas Bianchi and Ding He and Derrick Vaughn and Elizabeth Williams and Chuning Wang and Craig Smeaton and Katarzyna Koziorowska-Makuch and Johan Faust and Alain Plante and Brad Rosenheim",

note = "Funding: This work is financially supported by the Shanghai Frontiers Science Center of Polar Science (SCOPS), National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) for Excellent Young Scientists Fund Program (Overseas). J.C.F. has been supported by the European Community{\textquoteright}s 7th Framework Programme FP7 2007/2013, Marie-Curie Actions (grant no. 238111).",

year = "2022",

month = nov,

day = "18",

doi = "10.1126/sciadv.add0610",

language = "English",

volume = "8",

journal = "Science Advances",

issn = "2375-2548",

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TY - JOUR

T1 - Global fjords as transitory reservoirs of labile organic carbon modulated by organo-mineral interactions

AU - Cui, Xingqian

AU - Mucci, Alfonso

AU - Bianchi, Thomas

AU - He, Ding

AU - Vaughn, Derrick

AU - Williams, Elizabeth

AU - Wang, Chuning

AU - Smeaton, Craig

AU - Koziorowska-Makuch, Katarzyna

AU - Faust, Johan

AU - Plante, Alain

AU - Rosenheim, Brad

N1 - Funding: This work is financially supported by the Shanghai Frontiers Science Center of Polar Science (SCOPS), National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) for Excellent Young Scientists Fund Program (Overseas). J.C.F. has been supported by the European Community’s 7th Framework Programme FP7 2007/2013, Marie-Curie Actions (grant no. 238111).

PY - 2022/11/18

Y1 - 2022/11/18

N2 - The global carbon cycle is strongly modulated by organic carbon (OC) sequestration and decomposition. Whereas the extent of OC sequestration is relatively well-constrained in marine sedimentary basins, there are few quantitative estimates of its susceptibility to decomposition. Fjords are widely distributed hotspots of sedimentation, and currently account for 11% of annual OC burial in marine sediments. Here, we adopt fjords as model systems to investigate the reactivity of sedimentary OC by assessing the distribution of the activation energy (termed E) required to break OC covalent bonds. Our results reveal that OC in fjord sediments is more labile than that in global sediments, which is governed by unique OC provenance and organo-mineral interactions. We estimated that 61±16% of the sedimentary OC in fjords is degradable. Once this OC is remobilized and remineralized during glacial periods (sea level lowstands), the CO2 produced could counterbalance up to 50 ppm of atmospheric CO2 decrease in glacial times, making fjords critical actors in dampening glacial-interglacial climate fluctuations through negative carbon cycling loops.

AB - The global carbon cycle is strongly modulated by organic carbon (OC) sequestration and decomposition. Whereas the extent of OC sequestration is relatively well-constrained in marine sedimentary basins, there are few quantitative estimates of its susceptibility to decomposition. Fjords are widely distributed hotspots of sedimentation, and currently account for 11% of annual OC burial in marine sediments. Here, we adopt fjords as model systems to investigate the reactivity of sedimentary OC by assessing the distribution of the activation energy (termed E) required to break OC covalent bonds. Our results reveal that OC in fjord sediments is more labile than that in global sediments, which is governed by unique OC provenance and organo-mineral interactions. We estimated that 61±16% of the sedimentary OC in fjords is degradable. Once this OC is remobilized and remineralized during glacial periods (sea level lowstands), the CO2 produced could counterbalance up to 50 ppm of atmospheric CO2 decrease in glacial times, making fjords critical actors in dampening glacial-interglacial climate fluctuations through negative carbon cycling loops.

KW - Fjords

KW - Carbon cycle

KW - Radiocarbon

KW - Ramped pyrolysis oxidation-radiocarbon analysis (RPO-14C)

KW - Ramped combustion-evolved CO2 gas analysis (RC-EGA)

U2 - 10.1126/sciadv.add0610

DO - 10.1126/sciadv.add0610

M3 - Article

SN - 2375-2548

VL - 8

JO - Science Advances

JF - Science Advances

IS - 46

M1 - eadd0610

ER -

Global fjords as transitory reservoirs of labile organic carbon modulated by organo-mineral interactions

Abstract

Keywords

UN SDGs

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