Seasonal Carbon Dioxide Concentrations and Fluxes Throughout Denmark's Stream Network

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Streams are important freshwater habitats in large-scale carbon budgets because of their high CO2 fluxes which are driven by high CO2 concentrations and surface-water turbulence. High CO2 concentrations are promoted by terrestrial carbon inputs, groundwater flow, and internal respiration, all of which vary greatly across space and time. We used environmental monitoring data to calculate CO2 concentrations along with a wide range of predictor variables including outputs from a national hydrological model and trained machine learning models to predict spatially distributed seasonal CO2 concentrations in Danish streams. We found that streams were supersaturated in dissolved CO2 (mean = 118 μM) and higher during autumn and winter than during spring and summer. The best model, a Random Forest model, scored R2 = 0.46, MAE = 46.0 μM, and ⍴ = 0.72 on a test set. The most important predictor variables were catchment slope, seasonality, height above nearest drainage, and depth to groundwater, highlighting the importance of landscape morphometry and soil-groundwater-stream connectivity. Stream CO2 fluxes determined from the predicted concentrations and gas transfer velocities estimated using empirical relationships averaged 253 mmol m−2 d−1, and the annual emissions were 513 Gg CO2 from the national stream network (area = 139 km2). Our analysis presents a framework for modeling seasonal CO2 concentrations and estimating fluxes at a national scale by means of large-scale hydrological model outputs. Future efforts should consider further improving the temporal resolution, direct measurements of fluxes and gas transfer velocities, and seasonal variation in stream surface area.
OriginalsprogEngelsk
Artikelnummere2024JG008031
TidsskriftJournal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences
Vol/bind129
Udgave nummer7
Antal sider15
ISSN2169-8953
DOI
StatusUdgivet - 2024

Bibliografisk note

Funding Information:
This work was supported by a grant to Kaj Sand\u2010Jensen from the Independent Research Fund Denmark (0217\u201000112B). We thank the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments, which improved the manuscript.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024. The Author(s).

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