Seasonal Wetlands Make a Relatively Limited Contribution to the Dissolved Carbon Pool of a Lowland Headwater Tropical Stream

Vanessa Solano; Clément Duvert; Lindsay B. Hutley; Dioni I. Cendón; Damien T. Maher; Christian Birkel

doi:10.1029/2023JG007556

Seasonal Wetlands Make a Relatively Limited Contribution to the Dissolved Carbon Pool of a Lowland Headwater Tropical Stream

Vanessa Solano, Clément Duvert, Lindsay B. Hutley, Dioni I. Cendón, Damien T. Maher, Christian Birkel

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Abstract

Wetlands process large amounts of carbon (C) that can be exported laterally to streams and rivers. However, our understanding of wetland inputs to streams remains unclear, particularly in tropical systems. Here we estimated the contribution of seasonal wetlands to the C pool of a lowland headwater stream in the Australian tropics. We measured dissolved organic and inorganic C (DOC and DIC) and dissolved gases (carbon dioxide—CO₂, methane—CH₄) during the wet season along the mainstem and in wetland drains connected to the stream. We also recorded hourly measurements of dissolved CO₂ along a ‘stream–wetland drain–stream’ continuum, and used a hydrological model combined with a simple mass balance approach to assess the water, DIC and DOC sources to the stream. Seasonal wetlands contributed ∼15% and ∼16% of the DOC and DIC loads during our synoptic sampling, slightly higher than the percent area (∼9%) they occupy in the catchment. The riparian forest (75% of the DOC load) and groundwater inflows (58% of the DIC load) were identified as the main sources of stream DOC and DIC. Seasonal wetlands also contributed marginally to stream CO₂ and CH₄. Importantly, the rates of stream CO₂ emission (1.86 g C s⁻¹) and DOC mineralization (0.33 g C s⁻¹) were much lower than the downstream export of DIC (6.39 g C s⁻¹) and DOC (2.66 g g C s⁻¹). This work highlights the need for further research on the role of riparian corridors as producers and conduits of terrestrial C to tropical streams.

Original language	English
Article number	e2023JG007556
Pages (from-to)	1-16
Number of pages	16
Journal	Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences
Volume	129
Issue number	2
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1029/2023JG007556
Publication status	Published - Feb 2024

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We acknowledge the First Nations peoples as the Traditional Custodians and first scientists of the land where this research was conducted. We would like to thank the Northern Territory Parks and Wildlife Commission, and Power and Water for access to the site. We acknowledge the help of our field assistants and volunteers, technical support from Matt Northwood and lab support from Alea Rose and Dylan Campbell. We are grateful to Niels Munksgaard for data sharing, BoM and the NTGov for publicly available data, and CDU, SCU, and ANSTO for sample analyses. VS thanks ANSTO, SCU, and EG-UCR for hosting her. VS was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship and an AINSE Ltd. Postgraduate Research Award. CD was supported by the Australian Research Council (DE220100852). CB was supported by the Water and Global Change Observatory (OACG: C2902). Lastly, we would like to thank the Associate Editor as well as Mike Peacock and an anonymous reviewer for helping us improve this paper. Open access publishing facilitated by Charles Darwin University, as part of the Wiley - Charles Darwin University agreement via the Council of Australian University Librarians.

Funding Information:
We acknowledge the First Nations peoples as the Traditional Custodians and first scientists of the land where this research was conducted. We would like to thank the Northern Territory Parks and Wildlife Commission, and Power and Water for access to the site. We acknowledge the help of our field assistants and volunteers, technical support from Matt Northwood and lab support from Alea Rose and Dylan Campbell. We are grateful to Niels Munksgaard for data sharing, BoM and the NTGov for publicly available data, and CDU, SCU, and ANSTO for sample analyses. VS thanks ANSTO, SCU, and EG‐UCR for hosting her. VS was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship and an AINSE Ltd. Postgraduate Research Award. CD was supported by the Australian Research Council (DE220100852). CB was supported by the Water and Global Change Observatory (OACG: C2902). Lastly, we would like to thank the Associate Editor as well as Mike Peacock and an anonymous reviewer for helping us improve this paper. Open access publishing facilitated by Charles Darwin University, as part of the Wiley ‐ Charles Darwin University agreement via the Council of Australian University Librarians.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024. The Authors.

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Cite this

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title = "Seasonal Wetlands Make a Relatively Limited Contribution to the Dissolved Carbon Pool of a Lowland Headwater Tropical Stream",

abstract = "Wetlands process large amounts of carbon (C) that can be exported laterally to streams and rivers. However, our understanding of wetland inputs to streams remains unclear, particularly in tropical systems. Here we estimated the contribution of seasonal wetlands to the C pool of a lowland headwater stream in the Australian tropics. We measured dissolved organic and inorganic C (DOC and DIC) and dissolved gases (carbon dioxide—CO2, methane—CH4) during the wet season along the mainstem and in wetland drains connected to the stream. We also recorded hourly measurements of dissolved CO2 along a {\textquoteleft}stream–wetland drain–stream{\textquoteright} continuum, and used a hydrological model combined with a simple mass balance approach to assess the water, DIC and DOC sources to the stream. Seasonal wetlands contributed ∼15% and ∼16% of the DOC and DIC loads during our synoptic sampling, slightly higher than the percent area (∼9%) they occupy in the catchment. The riparian forest (75% of the DOC load) and groundwater inflows (58% of the DIC load) were identified as the main sources of stream DOC and DIC. Seasonal wetlands also contributed marginally to stream CO2 and CH4. Importantly, the rates of stream CO2 emission (1.86 g C s−1) and DOC mineralization (0.33 g C s−1) were much lower than the downstream export of DIC (6.39 g C s−1) and DOC (2.66 g g C s−1). This work highlights the need for further research on the role of riparian corridors as producers and conduits of terrestrial C to tropical streams.",

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note = "Funding Information: We acknowledge the First Nations peoples as the Traditional Custodians and first scientists of the land where this research was conducted. We would like to thank the Northern Territory Parks and Wildlife Commission, and Power and Water for access to the site. We acknowledge the help of our field assistants and volunteers, technical support from Matt Northwood and lab support from Alea Rose and Dylan Campbell. We are grateful to Niels Munksgaard for data sharing, BoM and the NTGov for publicly available data, and CDU, SCU, and ANSTO for sample analyses. VS thanks ANSTO, SCU, and EG-UCR for hosting her. VS was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship and an AINSE Ltd. Postgraduate Research Award. CD was supported by the Australian Research Council (DE220100852). CB was supported by the Water and Global Change Observatory (OACG: C2902). Lastly, we would like to thank the Associate Editor as well as Mike Peacock and an anonymous reviewer for helping us improve this paper. Open access publishing facilitated by Charles Darwin University, as part of the Wiley - Charles Darwin University agreement via the Council of Australian University Librarians. Funding Information: We acknowledge the First Nations peoples as the Traditional Custodians and first scientists of the land where this research was conducted. We would like to thank the Northern Territory Parks and Wildlife Commission, and Power and Water for access to the site. We acknowledge the help of our field assistants and volunteers, technical support from Matt Northwood and lab support from Alea Rose and Dylan Campbell. We are grateful to Niels Munksgaard for data sharing, BoM and the NTGov for publicly available data, and CDU, SCU, and ANSTO for sample analyses. VS thanks ANSTO, SCU, and EG‐UCR for hosting her. VS was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship and an AINSE Ltd. Postgraduate Research Award. CD was supported by the Australian Research Council (DE220100852). CB was supported by the Water and Global Change Observatory (OACG: C2902). Lastly, we would like to thank the Associate Editor as well as Mike Peacock and an anonymous reviewer for helping us improve this paper. Open access publishing facilitated by Charles Darwin University, as part of the Wiley ‐ Charles Darwin University agreement via the Council of Australian University Librarians. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2024. The Authors.",

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Seasonal Wetlands Make a Relatively Limited Contribution to the Dissolved Carbon Pool of a Lowland Headwater Tropical Stream

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