High rates of organic carbon burial in submarine deltas maintained on geological timescales
Type | Article | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Date | 2022-11 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Language | English | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Author(s) | Hage Sophie1, 2, 6, Romans Brian3, Peploe Thomas1, Poyatos-Moré Miquel4, Haeri Ardakani Omid1, 5, Bell Daniel1, Englert Rebecca1, Kaempfe-Droguett Sebastian3, Nesbit Paul1, Sherstan Georgia1, Synnott Dane1, Hubbard Stephen1 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Affiliation(s) | 1 : Department of Geoscience, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada 2 : Geo-Ocean, Univ. Brest, CNRS, Ifremer, Finistère, France 3 : Department of Geosciences, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA 4 : Departament de Geologia, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Spain 5 : Natural Resources Canada, Geological Survey of Canada, Calgary, Alberta, Canada 6 : Geo-Ocean, Univ. Brest, CNRS, Ifremer, Finistère, France |
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Source | Nature Geoscience (1752-0894) (Nature), 2022-11 , Vol. 15 , N. 11 , P. 919-924 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
DOI | 10.1038/s41561-022-01048-4 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
WOS© Times Cited | 2 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Abstract | Burial of terrestrial organic carbon in marine sediments can draw down atmospheric CO2 levels on Earth over geologic timescales (≥105 yr). The largest sinks of organic carbon burial in present-day oceans lie in deltas, which are composed of three-dimensional sigmoidal sedimentary packages called clinothems, dipping from land to sea. Analysis of modern delta clinothems, however, provides only a snapshot of the temporal and spatial characteristics of these complex systems, making long-term organic carbon burial efficiency difficult to constrain. Here we determine the stratigraphy of an exhumed delta clinothem preserved in Upper Cretaceous (~75 million years ago) deposits in the Magallanes Basin, Chile, using field measurements and aerial photos, which was then combined with measurement of total organic carbon to create a comprehensive organic carbon budget. We show that the clinothem buried 93 ± 19 Mt terrestrial-rich organic carbon over a duration of 0.1–0.9 Myr. When normalized to the clinothem surface area, this represents an annual burial of 2.3–15.7 t km−2 yr−1 organic carbon, which is on the same order of magnitude as modern-day burial rates in clinothems such as the Amazon delta. This study demonstrates that deltas have been and will probably be substantial terrestrial organic carbon sinks over geologic timescales, a long-standing idea that had yet to be quantified. |
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