Global carbon dioxide emissions from inland waters. Nature, 503(7476): 355-359http://dx

[1] Carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) and methane (CH 4 ) emissions are important, but poorly quantified, components of riverine carbon (C) budgets. This is largely because the data needed for gas flux calculations are sparse and are spatially and temporally variable. Additionally, the importance of C gas emissions relative to lateral C exports is not well known because gaseous and aqueous fluxes are not commonly measured on the same rivers. We couple measurements of aqueous CO 2 and CH 4 partial pressures (pCO 2 , pCH 4 ) and flux across the water-air interface with gas transfer models to calculate subbasin distributions of gas flux density. We then combine those flux densities with remote and direct observations of stream and river water surface area and ice duration, to calculate C gas emissions from flowing waters throughout the Yukon River basin. CO 2 emissions were 7.68 Tg C yr À1 (95% CI: 5.84 À10.46), averaging 750 g C m À2 yr À1 normalized to water surface area, and 9.0 g C m À2 yr À1 normalized to river basin area. River CH 4 emissions totaled 55 Gg C yr À1 or 0.7% of the total mass of C emitted as CO 2 plus CH 4 and $6.4% of their combined radiative forcing. When combined with lateral inorganic plus organic C exports to below head of tide, C gas emissions comprised 50% of total C exported by the Yukon River and its tributaries. River CO 2 and CH 4 derive from multiple sources, including groundwater, surface water runoff, carbonate equilibrium reactions, and benthic and water column microbial processing of organic C. The exact role of each of these processes is not yet quantified in the overall river C budget.Citation: Striegl, R. G., M. M. Dornblaser, C. P. McDonald, J. R. Rover, and E. G. Stets (2012), Carbon dioxide and methane emissions from the Yukon River system, Global Biogeochem. Cycles, 26, GB0E05,

Inland water ecosystems dynamically process, transport, and sequester carbon. However, the transport of carbon through aquatic environments has not been quantitatively integrated in the context of terrestrial ecosystems. Here, we present the first integrated assessment, to our knowledge, of freshwater carbon fluxes for the conterminous United States, where 106 (range: 71-149) teragrams of carbon per year (TgC·y in lakes and reservoirs. We show that there is significant regional variation in aquatic carbon flux, but verify that emission across stream and river surfaces represents the dominant flux at 69 (range: 36-110) TgC·y −1 or 65% of the total aquatic carbon flux for the conterminous United States. Comparing our results with the output of a suite of terrestrial biosphere models (TBMs), we suggest that within the current modeling framework, calculations of net ecosystem production (NEP) defined as terrestrial only may be overestimated by as much as 27%. However, the internal production and mineralization of carbon in freshwaters remain to be quantified and would reduce the effect of including aquatic carbon fluxes within calculations of terrestrial NEP. Reconciliation of carbon mass-flux interactions between terrestrial and aquatic carbon sources and sinks will require significant additional research and modeling capacity.carbon | aquatic ecosystems | terrestrial ecosystems | carbon flux | inland waters

[1] Accurate quantification of CO 2 flux across the air-water interface and identification of the mechanisms driving CO 2 concentrations in lakes and reservoirs is critical to integrating aquatic systems into large-scale carbon budgets, and to predicting the response of these systems to changes in climate or terrestrial carbon cycling. Large-scale estimates of the role of lakes and reservoirs in the carbon cycle, however, typically must rely on aggregation of spatially and temporally inconsistent data from disparate sources. We performed a spatially comprehensive analysis of CO 2 concentration and air-water fluxes in lakes and reservoirs of the contiguous United States using large, consistent data sets, and modeled the relative contribution of inorganic and organic carbon loading to vertical CO 2 fluxes. Approximately 70% of lakes and reservoirs are supersaturated with respect to the atmosphere during the summer (June-September). Although there is considerable interregional and intraregional variability, lakes and reservoirs represent a net source of CO 2 to the atmosphere of approximately 40 Gg C d -1 during the summer. While in-lake CO 2 concentrations correlate with indicators of in-lake net ecosystem productivity, virtually no relationship exists between dissolved organic carbon and pCO 2,aq . Modeling suggests that hydrologic dissolved inorganic carbon supports pCO 2,aq in most supersaturated systems (to the extent that 12% of supersaturated systems simultaneously exhibit positive net ecosystem productivity), and also supports primary production in most CO 2 -undersaturated systems. Dissolved inorganic carbon loading appears to be an important determinant of CO 2 concentrations and fluxes across the air-water interface in the majority of lakes and reservoirs in the contiguous United States.