Journal article

Terrestrial versus versus aquatic carbon fluxes in a subtropical agricultural floodplain over an annual cycle

Jackie R Webb, Isaac R Santos, Damien T Maher, Ben Macdonald, Barbara Robson, Peter Isaac, Ian McHugh

Agricultural and Forest Meteorology | Elsevier | Published : 2018

Abstract

Aquatic carbon exports are an understudied component of catchment carbon budgets. For drained agroecosystems, the role of this aquatic pathway in offsetting the terrestrial carbon sink is unknown. Here, we present findings on the complete annual carbon budget of a subtropical agricultural floodplain in Australia. We quantified net ecosystem exchange (NEE) using eddy covariance, and aquatic carbon fluxes from drainage canals over an annual cycle, including atmospheric exchange of aquatic CO2 and CH4, as well as lateral exports of dissolved organic, inorganic and particulate carbon. The floodplain was a large atmospheric CO2 sink, with an annual NEE of −900 g C m−2 yr−1 driven by the sugarcane..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Grants

Awarded by Australian Research Council and research funds from a CSIRO Postgraduate scholarship


Awarded by Australian Research Council


Funding Acknowledgements

Analytical instrumentation (LE120100156) and field investigations (DE140101733) were funded by the Australian Research Council and research funds from a CSIRO Postgraduate scholarship (R-06417) to JRW. We are grateful to the knowledge and support of Robert Quirk who allowed monitoring to take place from his property. We thank Paul Kelly, Douglas Tait, and Luke Jeffrey for their continuous fieldwork assistance as well as Phillip Riekenberg, James Sippo, Lea Taylor, and Mitchell Call for flux tower deployment and takedown. IRS and DTM salaries were partly funded by the Australian Research Council (DE140101733 and DE150100581).