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Dissolved organic carbon in glaciers of the southeastern Tibetan Plateau: Insights into concentrations and possible sources

Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) released from glaciers has an important role in the biogeochemistry of glacial ecosystems. This study focuses on DOC from glaciers of the southeastern Tibetan Plateau, where glaciers are experiencing rapid shrinkage. We found that concentrations of DOC in snowpits (0.1...

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Autores principales: Zhang, Yulan, Kang, Shichang, Li, Gang, Gao, Tanguang, Chen, Pengfei, Li, Xiaofei, Liu, Yajun, Hu, Zhaofu, Sun, Shiwei, Guo, Junming, Wang, Kun, Chen, Xintong, Sillanpää, Mika
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6181362/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30308022
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0205414
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author Zhang, Yulan
Kang, Shichang
Li, Gang
Gao, Tanguang
Chen, Pengfei
Li, Xiaofei
Liu, Yajun
Hu, Zhaofu
Sun, Shiwei
Guo, Junming
Wang, Kun
Chen, Xintong
Sillanpää, Mika
author_facet Zhang, Yulan
Kang, Shichang
Li, Gang
Gao, Tanguang
Chen, Pengfei
Li, Xiaofei
Liu, Yajun
Hu, Zhaofu
Sun, Shiwei
Guo, Junming
Wang, Kun
Chen, Xintong
Sillanpää, Mika
author_sort Zhang, Yulan
collection PubMed
description Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) released from glaciers has an important role in the biogeochemistry of glacial ecosystems. This study focuses on DOC from glaciers of the southeastern Tibetan Plateau, where glaciers are experiencing rapid shrinkage. We found that concentrations of DOC in snowpits (0.16±0.054 μg g(−1)), aged snow (0.16±0.048 μg g(−1)), and bare ice (0.18±0.082 μg g(−1)) were similar across the southeastern Tibetan Plateau, but were slightly lower than those in other glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau. Vertical variations of DOC, particulate organic carbon, black carbon, and total nitrate in snowpit showed no systematic variations in the studied glaciers, with high values of DOC occurring in the ice or dusty layers. We estimated the export of DOC and particulate organic carbon from glaciers to be 1.96±0.66 Gg yr(–1) and 5.88±2.15 Gg yr(–1) in this region, respectively, indicating that organic carbon released from glacier meltwater may be affecting downstream ecosystems. Potential sources of the air masses arriving at the southeastern Tibetan glaciers include South Asia, Central Asia, Middle East, and northwest China. Emissions from biomass burning of South Asia played an important role in the deposition of DOC to the glacier, which can be evidenced by backward trajectories and fire spot distributions from MODIS and CALIPSO images. Our findings suggest that anthropogenic aerosols contribute abundant DOC to glaciers on the southeastern Tibetan Plateau. The pronounced rate of glacial melting in the region may be delivering increased quantities of relic DOC to downstream rivers.
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spelling pubmed-61813622018-10-26 Dissolved organic carbon in glaciers of the southeastern Tibetan Plateau: Insights into concentrations and possible sources Zhang, Yulan Kang, Shichang Li, Gang Gao, Tanguang Chen, Pengfei Li, Xiaofei Liu, Yajun Hu, Zhaofu Sun, Shiwei Guo, Junming Wang, Kun Chen, Xintong Sillanpää, Mika PLoS One Research Article Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) released from glaciers has an important role in the biogeochemistry of glacial ecosystems. This study focuses on DOC from glaciers of the southeastern Tibetan Plateau, where glaciers are experiencing rapid shrinkage. We found that concentrations of DOC in snowpits (0.16±0.054 μg g(−1)), aged snow (0.16±0.048 μg g(−1)), and bare ice (0.18±0.082 μg g(−1)) were similar across the southeastern Tibetan Plateau, but were slightly lower than those in other glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau. Vertical variations of DOC, particulate organic carbon, black carbon, and total nitrate in snowpit showed no systematic variations in the studied glaciers, with high values of DOC occurring in the ice or dusty layers. We estimated the export of DOC and particulate organic carbon from glaciers to be 1.96±0.66 Gg yr(–1) and 5.88±2.15 Gg yr(–1) in this region, respectively, indicating that organic carbon released from glacier meltwater may be affecting downstream ecosystems. Potential sources of the air masses arriving at the southeastern Tibetan glaciers include South Asia, Central Asia, Middle East, and northwest China. Emissions from biomass burning of South Asia played an important role in the deposition of DOC to the glacier, which can be evidenced by backward trajectories and fire spot distributions from MODIS and CALIPSO images. Our findings suggest that anthropogenic aerosols contribute abundant DOC to glaciers on the southeastern Tibetan Plateau. The pronounced rate of glacial melting in the region may be delivering increased quantities of relic DOC to downstream rivers. Public Library of Science 2018-10-11 /pmc/articles/PMC6181362/ /pubmed/30308022 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0205414 Text en © 2018 Zhang et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Zhang, Yulan
Kang, Shichang
Li, Gang
Gao, Tanguang
Chen, Pengfei
Li, Xiaofei
Liu, Yajun
Hu, Zhaofu
Sun, Shiwei
Guo, Junming
Wang, Kun
Chen, Xintong
Sillanpää, Mika
Dissolved organic carbon in glaciers of the southeastern Tibetan Plateau: Insights into concentrations and possible sources
title Dissolved organic carbon in glaciers of the southeastern Tibetan Plateau: Insights into concentrations and possible sources
title_full Dissolved organic carbon in glaciers of the southeastern Tibetan Plateau: Insights into concentrations and possible sources
title_fullStr Dissolved organic carbon in glaciers of the southeastern Tibetan Plateau: Insights into concentrations and possible sources
title_full_unstemmed Dissolved organic carbon in glaciers of the southeastern Tibetan Plateau: Insights into concentrations and possible sources
title_short Dissolved organic carbon in glaciers of the southeastern Tibetan Plateau: Insights into concentrations and possible sources
title_sort dissolved organic carbon in glaciers of the southeastern tibetan plateau: insights into concentrations and possible sources
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6181362/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30308022
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0205414
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