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CARBON CYCLE

Carbon fate in lowland rivers

Nature Geoscience volume 14, pages 802–803 (2021)Cite this article

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The fate of sedimentary carbon in rivers is determined by a combination of mineral protection and transit time. Along the fluvial journey from headwaters to sea, biogeochemical transformations control whether carbon is buried or returned to the atmosphere as CO2.

The role of riverine sediment carbon in the global carbon balance remains an open question because of the heterogeneity in sediment carbon compositions, lack of accepted degradation times for different sediment types and the wide range of sediment travel times across the world’s rivers. The concentration of sediment carbon input to rivers can vary substantially. For instance, in cultivated and pasture landscapes of temperate climates, the sediment carbon content entering rivers can be an order of magnitude greater than in undisturbed systems, with a greater fraction of organic carbon that can be rapidly oxidized by microorganisms3. Further, in systems where influxes of organic matter are high — for example, adjacent to heavily vegetated landscapes or when algae production is high — degradation rates of organic matter may increase due to the proliferation of heterotrophic bacteria in the river water4. All these factors and more contribute to carbon dynamics and whether fluvial systems act to sequester carbon for the long term or return it to the atmosphere as CO2.

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Fig. 1: Tipping the scales on river carbon.

Marisa Repasch.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA

    William Ford

  2. Department of Civil Engineering, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA

    James Fox

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  1. William Ford
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  2. James Fox
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Correspondence to William Ford or James Fox.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Ford, W., Fox, J. Carbon fate in lowland rivers. Nat. Geosci. 14, 802–803 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-021-00849-3

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