Anthropogenically enhanced fluxes of water and carbon from the Mississippi River

Peter A. Raymond (), Neung-Hwan Oh, R. Eugene Turner and Whitney Broussard
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Peter A. Raymond: Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, 21 Sachem Street, New Haven, Connecticut 06511, USA
Neung-Hwan Oh: Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, 21 Sachem Street, New Haven, Connecticut 06511, USA
R. Eugene Turner: Coastal Ecology Institute,
Whitney Broussard: Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70803, USA

Nature, 2008, vol. 451, issue 7177, 449-452

Abstract: Dirty ol' man river The flow of dissolved inorganic carbon from rivers to the oceans is an important net flux connecting the terrestrial and marine carbon reservoirs. Now a remarkable 100-year record of bicarbonate determinations, made at water treatment plants in the towns of Carrollton and Algiers, has been used as a basis for a study of Mississippi River water and carbon fluxes. Previous work revealed a significant increase the amount of dissolved inorganic carbon, mostly bicarbonate, exported by the Mississippi to the ocean over the past 50 years, but the cause for the increase remained uncertain. The Carrollton/Algiers data, together with sub-watershed and precipitation data, point to a mainly anthropogenic origin — increased bicarbonate discharge from agricultural watersheds that was not balanced by a rise in precipitation.

Date: 2008
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DOI: 10.1038/nature06505

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