Quantification of Carbon Dioxide Gas Transfer Velocity by Scaling from
Argon through Dual Tracer Gas Additions in Mountain Streams
Abstract
Quantification of the rate of gas exchange across the air-water
interface is essential in understanding the biogeochemical cycling of
carbon in mountain streams. However, estimating the gas transfer
velocity (k) is not trivial, due to high turbulence and subsequent
bubble-mediated gas transfer. Schmidt scaling is often used to estimate
gas transfer velocities of climate relevant gases (e.g. CO2) from tracer
gases (e.g. argon (Ar)), but this method has high uncertainty when
scaling between gases of different solubilities in streams with
bubble-mediated gas transfer. Here we explore a method for the
estimation of gas exchange of CO2 from Ar by performing dual tracer gas
additions in mountain streams. Ar and CO2 gas were simultaneously and
continuously injected into streams and gas exchange rates were estimated
using an exponential decline model. The mean ratio of gas exchange of Ar
to CO2 (a) was 1.7 (95% credible interval of 1.3 to 2.3), approximately
equal to the theoretical value of 1.7 (based both on Schmidt scaling and
solubility). This result indicates that Ar can be used to estimate gas
transfer of CO2 with scaling but with some uncertainty. Finally, modeled
results suggest that the use CO2 as a tracer gas to measure gas exchange
in streams with environmental conditions favoring interconversion to
bicarbonate (i.e, high pH and alkalinity), can result in an
overestimation of the gas transfer velocity k.