The importance of hydrology in routing terrestrial carbon to the atmosphere via global streams and rivers

Abstract

SignificanceStream/river carbon dioxide (CO₂) emission has significant spatial and seasonal variations critical for understanding its macroecosystem controls and plumbing of the terrestrial carbon budget. We relied on direct fluvial CO₂ partial pressure measurements and seasonally varying gas transfer velocity and river network surface area estimates to resolve reach-level seasonal variations of the flux at the global scale. The percentage of terrestrial primary production (GPP) shunted into rivers that ultimately contributes to CO₂ evasion increases with discharge across regions, due to a stronger response in fluvial CO₂ evasion to discharge than GPP. This highlights the importance of hydrology, in particular water throughput, in terrestrial-fluvial carbon transfers and the need to account for this effect in plumbing the terrestrial carbon budget.