The Organic Matter Biogeochemistry of the Congo River

Abstract:

Organic matter (OM) represents a fundamental link between terrestrial and aquatic carbon cycles and plays an essential role in aquatic ecosystem biogeochemistry. The Congo River, which drains pristine tropical forest and savannah is the second largest exporter of terrestrial carbon to the ocean, and represents a historically understudied basin. Our ongoing projects in the Congo Basin aim to provide pertinent information on transport and emissions of carbon by rivers that need to be incorporated into carbon budgets of terrestrial ecosystems. To date the Congo Basin has seen only limited perturbation but the carbon locked away in the Congo, as in other tropical rainforests is increasingly vulnerable to release into the aquatic system and the atmosphere. However, riverine carbon transport (both of OM to the oceans and release of CO₂ to the atmosphere) as a driver of global carbon cycling is still largely overlooked. Here we present data from a multi-season field campaign to quantify the transport fluxes, mineralization fluxes, and chemical character of Congo River OM, and to elucidate how these properties relate to each other and vary seasonally driven by hydrology within the Congo Basin. Existing data demonstrates that although tropical rivers do not experience the seasonal climatic extremes of temperate or northern high-latitude rivers, they all demonstrate similar effects due to changing hydrologic inputs with respect to OM dynamics. Specifically flushing periods appear to warrant further study as maximal export of reactive freshly leached plant material occurs during this time period.