Project: Collaborative Research: Constraining the source of oceanic dissolved black carbon using compound-specific stable carbon isotopes

NSF Award Abstract:
The char and soot remaining after fire is broadly referred to as black carbon. When char interacts with water, some of it dissolves and is carried away by rivers to the ocean. This soluble component of char is termed "dissolved black carbon" (DBC). Recent research has revealed DBC to be a major component of the carbon cycle. Most notably, DBC is now known to make up 10% of all dissolved organic carbon that rivers carry to the sea. Once in the ocean, DBC remains there for thousands of years, storing carbon that would otherwise be in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. As carbon dioxide contributes to the greenhouse effect, with higher carbon dioxide in the atmosphere leading to warmer global temperatures, it is important to understand where DBC in the ocean came from and how long it will stay locked away in the deep ocean. In this funded work, we set out to determine the source of the DBC in the ocean. Based upon our previous work that shows rivers export massive amounts of DBC to the coast, it has been suggested that rivers are the main source of DBC to the open ocean. However, in looking more closely at the DBC in rivers and the oceans, we found them to differ in one critical way: they have different isotopic signatures. This precludes them from having the same source, indicating that the DBC in the oceans is not from rivers. Our preliminary work only looked at a small river in Georgia, USA, and in the coastal waters offshore. In this funded project, we will take a global look at the isotopic signatures of DBC collected from large rivers such as the Amazon, Mississippi, and Yukon, and from the middle of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. If we find there is no overlap in the isotopes of the DBC from these major global rivers and ocean waters, we can conclude that rivers are not the main source of oceanic DBC and will need to search for new explanations of how molecules produced by fire end up in the deep ocean.

The project will enhance the career and continue the training of a first-time investigator and train undergraduate students in real world research through the Northeastern University Cooperative Program. In addition, our findings be adapted to produce learning materials for high school students in collaboration with the Science Journal for Kids.

Previous efforts to track DBC sources in natural waters have come with major limitations, preventing definitive connections to be made between oceanic DBC and its pyrogenic source. Photodegradation, a significant removal process for DBC in surface waters, drastically alters the molecular composition of DBC and erases any potential link between DBC chemical composition and its source. Bulk stable carbon isotopic measurements cannot unambiguously identify sources of DOC subcomponents, such as DBC. As such, this project aims to constrain the oceanic source of DBC by measuring compound-specific stable carbon isotopes of molecular markers (benzenepolycarboxylic acids, or BPCAs), derived exclusively from DBC. Our preliminary data show BPCA-specific isotopic values to have a sufficiently wide dynamic range between riverine and oceanic samples to test our hypotheses. In the current proposal, we aim to 1) isotopically characterize the largest quantified flux of DBC to the ocean (global rivers), 2) assess in situ oceanic variation in DBC stable carbon isotopic signatures, and 3) investigate the potential BPCA-specific fractionation effects of DBC photodegradation. In establishing a robust tracer for DBC source, we will be able to accurately constrain sources of oceanic DBC and further investigate the biogeochemical cycling of DBC across the terrestrial-marine continuum. The results of our research will also assist in answering larger research questions, specifically those regarding the fate of terrigenous DOM in the ocean, which have plagued biogeochemists for decades.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.