Marine organic geochemist, Professor Xuchen Wang and his student YuejunXue at MCTL studied the distribution, sources and seasonal changes of terrestrial organic matter transported by the Yellow River, the 2nd largest rivers in China. They measured radiocarbon in DOC and POC collected in the river from the headwater to estuary as continuum. Their results indicate that the Yellow River transports and exports millennial-aged organic carbon year around and the age of POC are much older than the age of DOC. They also found that the majority of the river-transported aged POC was deposited in the estuarine and coastal sediments, which represents a significant sink of organic carbon cycle. The results have been published online in Limnology and Oceanography and will be printed in L&O 2017 special issue “Headwaters to oceans: ecological and biogeochemical contrasts across the aquatic continuum”.
Citation: YuejunXue, Li Zou, Tiantian Ge andXuchen Wang (2017) Mobilization and export of millennial-aged organic carbon by the Yellow River. Limnology and Oceanography, doi: 10.1002/lno.10579.
