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A Process Based Stream Network Model for Predicting CO2 Concentrations and Fluxes at High Resolution
  • Brian Saccardi,
  • Matthew Winnick
Brian Saccardi
University of Massachusetts Amherst

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Matthew Winnick
University of Massachusetts Amherst
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Abstract

Inland waters are an important component of the global carbon budget, emitting CO2 to the atmosphere. However, our ability to predict carbon fluxes from stream systems remains uncertain as small scales of pCO2 variability within streams (100-102 m), which makes efforts relying on monitoring data uncertain. We incorporate CO2 input and output fluxes into a stream network advection-reaction model, representing the first process-based representation of stream CO2 dynamics at watershed scales. This model includes groundwater (GW) CO2 inputs, water column (WC), and benthic hyporheic zone (BHZ) respiration, downstream advection, and atmospheric exchange. We evaluate this model against existing statistical methods including upscaling and multiple linear regressions through comparisons to high-resolution stream pCO2 data collected across the East River Watershed in the Colorado Rocky Mountains (USA). The stream network model accurately captures topography-driven pCO2 variability and significantly outperforms multiple linear regressions for predicting pCO2. Further, the model provides estimates of CO2 contributions from internal versus external sources suggesting that streams transition from GW- to BHZ-dominated sources between 3rd and 4th Strahler orders, with GW, BHZ, and WC accounting for 49.3, 50.6, and 0.1% of CO2 fluxes from the watershed, respectively. Lastly, stream network model CO2 fluxes are 4-12x times smaller than upscaling technique predictions, largely due to inverse correlations between stream pCO2 and atmosphere exchange velocities. Taken together, this stream network model improves our ability to predict stream CO2 dynamics and efflux. Furthermore, future applications to regional and global scales may result in a significant downward revision of global flux estimates.