Soil carbon dioxide flux partitioning in a calcareous watershed with
agricultural impacts
Abstract
Predicting the partitioning between aqueous and gaseous C across
landscapes is difficult because many factors interact to control
CO2 concentrations and removal as DIC. For example,
carbonate minerals may buffer soil pH so that CO2
dissolves in porewaters, but nitrification of fertilizers may decrease
pH so that carbonate weathering results in a gaseous CO2
efflux. Here, we investigate CO2 production and
dissolution in an agricultural, first-order, mixed-lithology humid,
temperate watershed. We quantified soil mineralogy and measured
porewater chemistry, soil moisture, and pCO2 and
pO2 as a function of depth at three hillslope positions
for a year. The variation of soil moisture along the hillslope was the
dominant control on the concentration of soil CO2, but
mineralogy acted as a secondary control on the partitioning of
CO2 between the gaseous and aqueous phases. The
regression slopes of pCO2 vs. pO2 in the
carbonate-bearing soils indicate a deficit of CO2
relative to O2 (p < 0.05). Additionally, we
found no abiotic gaseous CO2 efflux from carbonate
weathering. We concluded that in the calcareous soils, about a third of
respired C dissolves and drains from the soil rather than diffusing out
to the atmosphere. To represent the global scope of the reactions we
evaluated at our local watershed, we used databases of carbonate
minerals and land uses to map types of soil degassing behaviors. Based
on our maps, the partitioning of respired soil CO2 to
the aqueous phase may be globally common and should be accounted for in
ecosystem C budgets and models.