Millennial soil retention of terrestrial organic matter deposited in the Bengal Fan.

ABSTRACT: The abundance of organic carbon (OC) in vegetation and soils (~2,600 PgC) compared to carbon in the atmosphere (~830 PgC) highlights the importance of terrestrial OC in global carbon budgets. The residence time of OC in continental reservoirs, which sets the rates of carbon exchange between land and atmosphere, represents a key uncertainty in global carbon cycle dynamics. Retention of terrestrial OC can also distort bulk OC- and biomarker-based paleorecords, yet continental storage timescales remain poorly quantified. Using "bomb" radiocarbon (¹⁴C) from thermonuclear weapons testing as a tracer, we model leaf-wax fatty acid and bulk OC ¹⁴C signatures in a river-proximal marine sediment core from the Bay of Bengal in order to constrain OC storage timescales within the

SUBMITTER: French KL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6086914 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature