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  • 1
    Publication Date: 2017-11-01
    Description: The last deglaciation was characterized by rising concentration in atmospheric CO2 (CO2atm) and a decrease in its radiocarbon content (Δ14Catm). Mobilization of 14C-depleted terrestrial organic carbon, which was previously frozen in extensive boreal permafrost soils, might have contributed to both changes, and was potentially caused by coastal erosion during deglacial sea-level rise and warming. Since parts of this potentially mobilized organic carbon was reburied in marine sediments, records of accumulation of terrigenous biomarkers and their compound-specific radiocarbon ages can provide insights into the timing and controls on permafrost decomposition. We present data from three marine sediment cores, two cores off the Amur River draining into the Sea of Okhotsk, and one core from the Northeastern Bering Sea adjacent to the Bering shelf (one the largest shelf areas flooded during the deglaciation) receiving input from the Yukon River. During the Last Glacial Maximum all catchments were completely covered with permafrost. Today, the Amur drainage basin is free of permafrost while the Yukon catchment is covered by discontinuous permafrost. All sites show three distinct deglacial maxima (at 16.5, 14.5, 11.5 ka BP) in accumulation of old terrigenous biomarkers (5-20 kyr old at the time of deposition). The peaks occurred during meltwater pulses suggesting that sea-level rise remobilized old terrestrial carbon from permafrost on the flooded shelfs. In the Bering Sea fossil, mature organic matter, mobilized by erosion of organic rich rocks during the retreat of Brooks Range glaciers and the Laurentide ice sheet additionally contributed to the first peak via increased fluvial runoff. Deglacial changes in abundance ratios of long-chain n-alkanes record gradual changes in vegetation type and wetland extent in the Amur-river catchment. Since wetland expansion is closely linked to permafrost thaw this implies that permafrost decomposition in the Amur drainage basin was a gradual process. By contrast sea-level rise caused abrupt decomposition events across the Okhotsk and Bering Shelfs. We extrapolate our localized findings to an overall potential carbon release during deglaciation of 285 PgC from coastal erosion in the Arctic Ocean and the related permafrost decomposition. By analysing some idealized scenarios using the global carbon cycle model BICYCLE we estimate the impact of such a release on the atmosphere. We find that it might have accounted for a deglacial rise in CO2atm of up to 15 ppm, and to a decline in ∆14Catm of 15‰. These results, if restricted to the three peak events connected to rapid sea-level rise, as supported by our data, might have contributed particularly to abrupt changes in CO2atm and ∆14Catm, corresponding to 15-20% of both, the observed rise in CO2atm of ~90 ppm, and the residual in ∆14Catm that is unexplained by changes in the 14C production rate.
    Repository Name: EPIC Alfred Wegener Institut
    Type: Conference , notRev
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  • 2
    Publication Date: 2021-06-21
    Description: Compound-specific radiocarbon (14C) dating often requires working with small samples of 〈 100 μg carbon (μgC). This makes the radiocarbon dates of biomarker compounds very sensitive to biases caused by extraneous carbon of unknown composition, a procedural blank, which is introduced to the samples during the steps necessary to prepare a sample for radiocarbon analysis by accelerator mass spectrometry (i.e., isolating single compounds from a heterogeneous mixture, combustion, gas purification and graphitization). Reporting accurate radiocarbon dates thus requires a correction for the procedural blank. We present our approach to assess the fraction modern carbon (F14C) and the mass of the procedural blanks introduced during the preparation procedures of lipid biomarkers (i.e. n-alkanoic acids) and lignin phenols. We isolated differently sized aliquots (6–151 μgC) of n-alkanoic acids and lignin phenols obtained from standard materials with known F14C values. Each compound class was extracted from two standard materials (one fossil, one modern) and purified using the same procedures as for natural samples of unknown F14C. There is an inverse linear relationship between the measured F14C values of the processed aliquots and their mass, which suggests constant contamination during processing of individual samples. We use Bayesian methods to fit linear regression lines between F14C and 1/mass for the fossil and modern standards. The intersection points of these lines are used to infer F14Cblank and mblank and their associated uncertainties. We estimate 4.88 ± 0.69 μgC of procedural blank with F14C of 0.714 ± 0.077 for n-alkanoic acids, and 0.90 ± 0.23 μgC of procedural blank with F14C of 0.813 ± 0.155 for lignin phenols. These F14Cblank and mblank can be used to correct AMS results of lipid and lignin samples by isotopic mass balance. This method may serve as a standardized procedure for blank assessment in small-scale radiocarbon analysis.
    Repository Name: EPIC Alfred Wegener Institut
    Type: Article , isiRev
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  • 3
    Publication Date: 2021-02-14
    Description: Thermal erosion of permafrost coasts delivers large quantities of organic carbon (OC) to arctic coastal waters. While deposition of permafrost OC in nearshore sediments potentially attenuates the ‘permafrost carbon feedback’, continued resuspension of sediments by waves, storms and currents potentially enhances greenhouse gas production in the nearshore zone. Recent studies, focusing on bulk sediments, suggest that permafrost OC derived from coastal erosion is predominantly deposited in the nearshore zone. However, hydrodynamic gradients in the coastal zone allow sorting processes to strongly influence the OC distribution and fate, which cannot be assessed by using bulk sediment approaches. Here, we study soils and sediments fractionated by density (1.8 g/cm-3 cutoff), separating the organic from the mineral-associated fraction, and size (63 µm), separating sand-associated from silt and clay-associated OC. We sampled sediments along a transect from an active retrogressive thaw slump at the coast of Herschel Island - Qikiqtaruk (Yukon, Canada), to the nearshore zone, towards an offshore sedimentary basin. Each sediment fraction was analysed for its elemental content (TOC, TN), carbon isotope signature (δ13C, Δ14C), molecular biomarkers (n-alkanes, n-alkanoic acids, lignin phenols, cutin acids), and mineral surface area. Preliminary data show that the OC partitioning between the sediment fractions changes considerably over the transect, suggesting that hydrodynamic sorting processes take place. Additionally, the OC characteristics of the fractions are significantly different from each other. For example, the low-density organic fraction shows a slightly less degraded signal than the high-density silt- and clay-associated OC fraction in several molecular biomarker proxies, and has a higher average TOC/TN ratio (24 ±3 versus 12 ±2). We aim to disentangle sorting processes and degradation mechanisms of permafrost OC along this transect of fractionated soils and sediments in the nearshore zone, and give new insights into pathway of this material upon erosion.
    Repository Name: EPIC Alfred Wegener Institut
    Type: Conference , notRev
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  • 4
    Publication Date: 2018-06-26
    Description: The last deglaciation was characterized by rising concentrations in atmospheric CO2 (CO2atm) and a decrease in its radiocarbon content (∆14Catm). Mobilization of 14C-depleted terrestrial organic carbon, which was previously frozen in extensive boreal permafrost soils, might have contributed to both changes. Since parts of this potentially mobilized organic carbon was reburied in marine sediments, records of accumulation of terrigenous biomarkers and their compound-specific radiocarbon ages can provide insights into the timing of, and controls on permafrost decomposition. We present data from marine sediment cores covering the last deglaciation that were retrieved from key locations potentially receiving terrigenous material mobilized from hotspot areas of permafrost thaw. In the North Pacific, we studied two cores off the Amur River draining into the Okhotsk Sea, and one core from the Northeastern Bering Sea adjacent to the Bering shelf (one of the largest shelf areas flooded during the deglaciation), which receives input from the Yukon River. During the Last Glacial Maximum these catchments were completely covered with permafrost. Today, the Amur drainage basin is free of permafrost while the Yukon catchment is covered by discontinuous permafrost. Besides, we investigated one core from the northwestern Black Sea as a record of terrigenous material released from the thawing European tundra. All sites show distinct deglacial maxima in accumulation of old terrigenous biomarkers (5-20 kyr old at the time of deposition). In the Black Sea, one early maximum of terrigenous organic matter accumulation occurred during HS1. In the North Pacific region, two more pronounced maxima occurred later during meltwater pulses suggesting that sea-level rise remobilized old terrestrial carbon from permafrost on the flooded shelfs. Sea-level rise thus likely caused abrupt decomposition events across the Okhotsk and Bering Shelfs. We extrapolate our localized findings to an overall potential carbon release during deglaciation of 285 Pg C from coastal erosion in the Arctic Ocean and the related permafrost decomposition. By analysing some idealized scenarios using the global carbon cycle model BICYCLE we estimate the impact of carbon release from thawing permafrost on the atmosphere. We find that it might have accounted for a deglacial rise in CO2atm of up to 15 ppm, and to a decline in ∆14Catm of 15 T ̇hese results, if restricted to the three peak events as supported by our data, might have contributed particularly to abrupt changes in CO2atm and ∆14Catm, corresponding to 15-20% of both, the observed rise in CO2atm of ∼90 ppm, and the residual in ∆14Catm that is unexplained by changes in the 14C production rate.
    Repository Name: EPIC Alfred Wegener Institut
    Type: Conference , notRev
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  • 5
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2018. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here under a nonexclusive, irrevocable, paid-up, worldwide license granted to WHOI. It is made available for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Nature Geoscience 11 (2018): 584-588, doi:10.1038/s41561-018-0159-8.
    Description: Wildfires and incomplete combustion of fossil fuel produce large amounts of black carbon. Black carbon production and transport are essential components of the carbon cycle. Constraining estimates of black carbon exported from land to ocean is critical, given ongoing changes in land use and climate, which affect fire occurrence and black carbon dynamics. Here, we present an inventory of the concentration and radiocarbon content (∆14C) of particulate black carbon for 18 rivers around the globe. We find that particulate black carbon accounts for about 15.8 ± 0.9% of river particulate organic carbon, and that fluxes of particulate black carbon co-vary with river-suspended sediment, indicating that particulate black carbon export is primarily controlled by erosion. River particulate black carbon is not exclusively from modern sources but is also aged in intermediate terrestrial carbon pools in several high-latitude rivers, with ages of up to 17,000 14C years. The flux-weighted 14C average age of particulate black carbon exported to oceans is 3,700 ± 400 14C years. We estimate that the annual global flux of particulate black carbon to the ocean is 0.017 to 0.037 Pg, accounting for 4 to 32% of the annually produced black carbon. When buried in marine sediments, particulate black carbon is sequestered to form a long-term sink for CO2.
    Description: A.C. acknowledges financial support from the University of Zurich Forschungskredit Fellowship and the University of Zurich (grant No. STWF-18-026). M.R., S.A. and M.S. acknowledge support from the University Research Priority Projection Global Change and Biodiversity (URPP-GCB). M.Z. acknowledges support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41521064). T.E. acknowledges support from the Swiss National Science Foundation (“CAPS-LOCK” and “CAPS-LOCK2” #200021_140850). V.G. acknowledges financial support from an Independent Study Award from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
    Type: Preprint
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  • 6
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: © The Author(s), 2018. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Research Letters 45 (2018): 8425-8434, doi:10.1029/2018GL078904.
    Description: Compound‐specific radiocarbon analysis was performed on different grain‐size fractions of surficial sediments to examine and compare lateral transport times (LTTs) of organic carbon. 14C aging of long‐chain leaf wax fatty acids along two dispersal pathways of fluvially derived material on adjacent continental margins implies LTTs over distances of ~30 to 500 km that range from hundreds to thousands of years. The magnitude of aging differs among grain size fractions. Our finding suggests that LTTs vary both temporally and spatially as a function of the specific properties of different continental shelf settings. Observations suggest that 14C aging is widespread during lateral transport over continental shelves, with hydrodynamic particle sorting inducing age variations among organic components residing in different grain sizes. Consideration of these phenomena is of importance for understanding carbon cycle processes and interpretation on sedimentary records on continental margins.
    Description: National Natural Science Foundation of China Grant Numbers: 41520104009, 41521064; MOE; JSPS Grant Numbers: A‐1003, 2‐1304, B‐0904, B‐0903, 22310014, 23651021, 25550020; NIES; SNSF Grant Number: 200021_140850
    Keywords: Radiocarbon ; Lateral particle transport time ; Organic carbon aging ; Continental shelf sediments ; Grain size fractions
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
    Type: Article
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  • 7
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: © The Author(s), 2018. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Biogeosciences 15 (2018): 3357-3375, doi:10.5194/bg-15-3357-2018.
    Description: The modern-day Godavari River transports large amounts of sediment (170 Tg per year) and terrestrial organic carbon (OCterr; 1.5 Tg per year) from peninsular India to the Bay of Bengal. The flux and nature of OCterr is considered to have varied in response to past climate and human forcing. In order to delineate the provenance and nature of organic matter (OM) exported by the fluvial system and establish links to sedimentary records accumulating on its adjacent continental margin, the stable and radiogenic isotopic composition of bulk OC, abundance and distribution of long-chain fatty acids (LCFAs), sedimentological properties (e.g. grain size, mineral surface area, etc.) of fluvial (riverbed and riverbank) sediments and soils from the Godavari basin were analysed and these characteristics were compared to those of a sediment core retrieved from the continental slope depocenter. Results show that river sediments from the upper catchment exhibit higher total organic carbon (TOC) contents than those from the lower part of the basin. The general relationship between TOC and sedimentological parameters (i.e. mineral surface area and grain size) of the sediments suggests that sediment mineralogy, largely driven by provenance, plays an important role in the stabilization of OM during transport along the river axis, and in the preservation of OM exported by the Godavari to the Bay of Bengal. The stable carbon isotopic (δ13C) characteristics of river sediments and soils indicate that the upper mainstream and its tributaries drain catchments exhibiting more 13C enriched carbon than the lower stream, resulting from the regional vegetation gradient and/or net balance between the upper (C4-dominated plants) and lower (C3-dominated plants) catchments. The radiocarbon contents of organic carbon (Δ14COC) in deep soils and eroding riverbanks suggests these are likely sources of "old" or pre-aged carbon to the Godavari River that increasingly dominates the late Holocene portion of the offshore sedimentary record. While changes in water flow and sediment transport resulting from recent dam construction have drastically impacted the flux, loci, and composition of OC exported from the modern Godavari basin, complicating reconciliation of modern-day river basin geochemistry with that recorded in continental margin sediments, such investigations provide important insights into climatic and anthropogenic controls on OC cycling and burial.
    Description: This project was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundations (“CAPS LOCK” grant no. 200021-140850 and “CAPS-LOCK2” grant no. 200021-163162). Francien Peterse received funding from NWO-Veni grant (grant no. 863.13.016). Liviu Giosan thanks grants from the National Science Foundation (OCE-0841736) and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
    Type: Article
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  • 8
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: © The Author(s), 2018. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Scientific Reports 8 (2018): 11997, doi:10.1038/s41598-018-30091-8.
    Description: The abundance of organic carbon (OC) in vegetation and soils (~2,600 PgC) compared to carbon in the atmosphere (~830 PgC) highlights the importance of terrestrial OC in global carbon budgets. The residence time of OC in continental reservoirs, which sets the rates of carbon exchange between land and atmosphere, represents a key uncertainty in global carbon cycle dynamics. Retention of terrestrial OC can also distort bulk OC- and biomarker-based paleorecords, yet continental storage timescales remain poorly quantified. Using “bomb” radiocarbon (14C) from thermonuclear weapons testing as a tracer, we model leaf-wax fatty acid and bulk OC 14C signatures in a river-proximal marine sediment core from the Bay of Bengal in order to constrain OC storage timescales within the Ganges-Brahmaputra (G-B) watershed. Our model shows that 79–83% of the leaf-waxes in this core were stored in continental reservoirs for an average of 1,000–1,200 calendar years, while the remainder was stored for an average of 15 years. This age structure distorts high-resolution organic paleorecords across geologically rapid events, highlighting that compound-specific proxy approaches must consider storage timescales. Furthermore, these results show that future environmental change could destabilize large stores of old - yet reactive - OC currently stored in tropical basins.
    Description: We acknowledge funding support from the Agouron Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship (K.L.F), the US National Science Foundation (Awards: OCE-1333387 and OCE-13333826), the Investment in Science Fund given primarily by WHOI Trustee and Corporation Members, and the Swiss National Science Foundation (Award: 200020_163162).
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
    Type: Article
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  • 9
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2018. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Freymond, C. V., Lupker, M., Peterse, F., Haghipour, N., Wacker, L., Filip, F., et al. (2018). Constraining instantaneous fluxes and integrated compositions of fluvially discharged organic matter. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, 19, 2453 2462. doi: 10.1029/2018GC007539.
    Description: Fluvial export of organic carbon (OC) and burial in ocean sediments comprises an important carbon sink, but fluxes remain poorly constrained, particularly for specific organic components. Here OC and lipid biomarker contents and isotopic characteristics of suspended matter determined in depth profiles across an active channel close to the terminus of the Danube River are used to constrain instantaneous OC and biomarker fluxes and integrated compositions during high to moderate discharges. During high (moderate) discharge, the total Danube exports 8 (7) kg/s OC, 7 (3) g/s higher plant‐derived long‐chain fatty acids (LCFA), 34 (21) g/s short‐chain fatty acids (SCFA), and 0.5 (0.2) g/s soil bacterial membrane lipids (brGDGTs). Integrated stable carbon isotopic compositions were TOC: −28.0 (−27.6)‰, LCFA: −33.5 (−32.8)‰ and Δ14C TOC: −129 (−38)‰, LCFA: −134 (−143)‰, respectively. Such estimates will aid in establishing quantitative links between production, export, and burial of OC from the terrestrial biosphere.
    Description: This project was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation SNF. Grant Number: 200021_140850. F.P. acknowledges funding from NWO‐VENI grant 863.13.016. We thank the sampling crews from both field campaigns (Björn Buggle, James Saenz, Alissa Zuijdgeest, Marilu Tavagna, Stefan Eugen Filip, Silvia Lavinia Filip, Mihai, Clayton Magill, Thomas Blattmann, and Michael Albani), Daniel Montluçon for lab support and Hannah Gies for PCGC work. Figures, tables, and equations can be found in supporting information.
    Keywords: Danube River ; organic carbon ; biomarker ; radiocarbon ; ADCP
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
    Type: Article
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  • 10
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: © The Author(s), 2015. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans 120 (2015): 2784–2799, doi:10.1002/2014JC010643.
    Description: To better understand the current carbon cycle and potentially detect its change in the rapidly changing Arctic Ocean, we examined sinking particles collected quasi-continuously over a period of 7 years (2004–2011) by bottom-tethered sediment trap moorings in the central Canada Basin. Total mass flux was very low (〈100 mg m−2 d−1) at all sites and was temporally decoupled from the cycle of primary production in surface waters. Extremely low radiocarbon contents of particulate organic carbon and high aluminum contents in sinking particles reveal high contributions of resuspended sediment to total sinking particle flux in the deep Canada Basin. Station A (75°N, 150°W) in the southwest quadrant of the Canada Basin is most strongly influenced while Station C (77°N, 140°W) in the northeast quadrant is least influenced by lateral particle supply based on radiocarbon content and Al concentration. The results at Station A, where three sediment traps were deployed at different depths, imply that the most likely mode of lateral particle transport was as thick clouds of enhanced particle concentration extending well above the seafloor. At present, only 1%–2% of the low levels of new production in Canada Basin surface waters reaches the interior basin. Lateral POC supply therefore appears to be the major source of organic matter to the interior basin. However, ongoing changes to surface ocean boundary conditions may influence both lateral and vertical supply of particulate material to the deep Canada Basin.
    Description: This research was funded by the NSF Division of Polar Programs (ARC-0909377), the Ocean and Climate Change Institute of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and ETH Zürich. J.H. and M.K. were partly supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea grant funded by the Korean Government (2011–0013629).
    Keywords: Canada Basin ; Particulate organic carbon ; Lateral supply ; Radiocarbon ; Carbon cycle
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
    Type: Article
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