Floodplain Modulation of Solute Fluxes from Mountainous Regions: the Amazonian Madre de Dios River Case Study

Abstract:

In many large river systems, solutes released by chemical weathering in mountainous regions are transported through floodplains before being discharged into the ocean. Chemical reactions within floodplains can both add and remove solutes, significantly modulating fluxes. Despite their importance in the relationship between tectonic uplift and solute fluxes to the ocean, many aspects of floodplain processes are poorly constrained since the chemistry of large rivers is also significantly affected by the mixing between multiple tributaries, which makes the separation and quantification of floodplain processes challenging.

Here we explore how floodplain processes affect a suite of major and trace elements in the Madre de Dios River system in Peru. To separate floodplain processes from conservative mixing, we developed a tributary mixing model that uses water isotopic ratios and chloride concentrations measured in each tributary and upstream and downstream of each tributary confluence for all major tributaries along a floodplain reach. The results of the tributary mixing model allow for the chemical composition of the mainstem of the Madre de Dios River to be modeled assuming completely conservative mixing. Differences between the modeled and measured chemical composition of the mainstem are then used to identify and quantify the effects of floodplain processes on different solutes.

Our results show that during both the wet and dry seasons, Li is removed and Ca, Mg, and Sr are added to the dissolved load during floodplain transit. Other solutes, like Na and SO₄, appear to behave conservatively during floodplain transit. Likely, the removal of Li from the dissolved load reflects the precipitation of secondary silicate minerals in the floodplain. The release of Ca, Mg, and Sr likely reflects the dissolution of detrital carbonate minerals. Our analyses also show that tributaries with Andean headwaters contribute disproportionately to solute budgets while the water budget is more equally split between Andean and pure foreland-floodplain tributaries. In part, this may explain the observation that solute concentrations in the mainstem of the Madre de Dios River dilute with increasing runoff.