Journal article
Long term carbon export from mountain forests driven by hydroclimate and extreme event driven landsliding
- Abstract:
- The export of organic carbon from terrestrial ecosystems by erosion may play a central role in balancing the geological carbon cycle and Earth's climate over millennial timescales. However, constraints on organic carbon yields have come from sampling modern rivers that don't capture variation over decades to millennia driven by changing hydroclimate and erosion during extreme events. Here we use volumetric reconstructions of lake sedimentary fills to generate timeseries of sediment and organic carbon yields from two catchments draining the Southern Alps, New Zealand over the last millennium. The reconstructed yields indicate that earthquake-induced landslides significantly increase sediment and organic carbon yields, contributing to pulsed export that accounts for ~40% of the total. Between extreme events, organic carbon export increased twofold during centuries with a wetter reconstructed climate. Our findings suggest that the link between hydroclimate and organic carbon export may act as a negative feedback in the longer-term carbon cycle.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 7.5MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1038/s43247-025-02382-2
Authors
+ Leverhulme Trust
More from this funder
- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/012mzw131
- Grant:
- VP1-2022-031
- Publisher:
- Springer Nature
- Journal:
- Communications Earth and Environment More from this journal
- Volume:
- 6
- Issue:
- 1
- Article number:
- 432
- Publication date:
- 2025-06-04
- Acceptance date:
- 2025-05-14
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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2662-4435
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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2129008
- Local pid:
-
pubs:2129008
- Deposit date:
-
2025-06-10
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Howarth et al
- Copyright date:
- 2025
- Rights statement:
- ©2025 The Authors. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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