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Turbidity Currents Can Dictate Organic Carbon Fluxes Across River‐Fed Fjords: An Example From Bute Inlet (BC, Canada)

Hage, S.; Galy, V.V.; Cartigny, M.J.B.; Heerema, C.; Heijnen, M.S.; Acikalin, S.; Clare, M.A.; Giesbrecht, I.; Gröcke, D.R.; Hendry, A.; Hilton, R.G.; Hubbard, S.M.; Hunt, J.E.; Lintern, D.G.; McGhee, C.; Parsons, D.R.; Pope, E.L.; Stacey, C.D.; Sumner, E.J.; Tank, S.; Talling, P.J.

Turbidity Currents Can Dictate Organic Carbon Fluxes Across River‐Fed Fjords: An Example From Bute Inlet (BC, Canada) Thumbnail


Authors

S. Hage

V.V. Galy

C. Heerema

M.S. Heijnen

S. Acikalin

M.A. Clare

I. Giesbrecht

A. Hendry

R.G. Hilton

S.M. Hubbard

J.E. Hunt

D.G. Lintern

C. McGhee

D.R. Parsons

C.D. Stacey

E.J. Sumner

S. Tank



Abstract

The delivery and burial of terrestrial particulate organic carbon (OC) in marine sediments is important to quantify, because this OC is a food resource for benthic communities, and if buried it may lower the concentrations of atmospheric CO2 over geologic timescales. Analysis of sediment cores has previously shown that fjords are hotspots for OC burial. Fjords can contain complex networks of submarine channels formed by seafloor sediment flows, called turbidity currents. However, the burial efficiency and distribution of OC by turbidity currents in river-fed fjords had not been investigated previously. Here, we determine OC distribution and burial efficiency across a turbidity current system within Bute Inlet, a fjord in western Canada. We show that 62% ± 10% of the OC supplied by the two river sources is buried across the fjord surficial (30–200 cm) sediment. The sandy subenvironments (channel and lobe) contain 63% ± 14% of the annual terrestrial OC burial in the fjord. In contrast, the muddy subenvironments (overbank and distal basin) contain the remaining 37% ± 14%. OC in the channel, lobe, and overbank exclusively comprises terrestrial OC sourced from rivers. When normalized by the fjord’s surface area, at least 3 times more terrestrial OC is buried in Bute Inlet, compared to the muddy parts of other fjords previously studied. Although the long-term (>100 years) preservation of this OC is still to be fully understood, turbidity currents in fjords appear to be efficient at storing OC supplied by rivers in their near-surface deposits.

Citation

Hage, S., Galy, V., Cartigny, M., Heerema, C., Heijnen, M., Acikalin, S., …Talling, P. (2022). Turbidity Currents Can Dictate Organic Carbon Fluxes Across River‐Fed Fjords: An Example From Bute Inlet (BC, Canada). Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, 127(6), https://doi.org/10.1029/2022jg006824

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date May 25, 2022
Online Publication Date Jun 9, 2022
Publication Date 2022
Deposit Date Jul 19, 2022
Publicly Available Date Jul 19, 2022
Journal Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences
Print ISSN 2169-8953
Electronic ISSN 2169-8961
Publisher American Geophysical Union
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 127
Issue 6
DOI https://doi.org/10.1029/2022jg006824

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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.





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