Rates and fluxes of centennial-scale carbon storage in the fine-grained sediments from the central South Yellow Sea and Min-Zhe belt, East China Sea -- Journal of Oceanology and Limnology,2018,36(1):139-152

	Cite this paper:
	WANG Jianghai, XIAO Xi, ZHOU Qianzhi, XU Xiaoming, ZHANG Chenxi, LIU Jinzhong, YUAN Dongliang. Rates and fluxes of centennial-scale carbon storage in the fine-grained sediments from the central South Yellow Sea and Min-Zhe belt, East China Sea[J]. Journal of Oceanology and Limnology, 2018, 36(1): 139-152

Rates and fluxes of centennial-scale carbon storage in the fine-grained sediments from the central South Yellow Sea and Min-Zhe belt, East China Sea

WANG Jianghai¹, XIAO Xi¹, ZHOU Qianzhi¹, XU Xiaoming¹, ZHANG Chenxi¹, LIU Jinzhong², YUAN Dongliang^3,4

1 Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Marine Resources and Coastal Engineering/South China Sea Bioresource Exploitation and Utilization Collaborative Innovation Center, School of Marine Sciences, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510006, China;
2 Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou 510640, China;
3 Function Laboratory for Ocean Dynamics and Climate, Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology, Qingdao 266071, China;
4 CAS Key Laboratory of Ocean Circulation and Wave Studies, Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Qingdao 266071, China

Abstract:

The global carbon cycle has played a key role in mitigating global warming and climate change. Long-term natural and anthropogenic processes influence the composition, sources, burial rates, and fluxes of carbon in sediments on the continental shelf of China. In this study, the rates, fluxes, and amounts of carbon storage at the centennial scale were estimated and demonstrated using the case study of three fine-grained sediment cores from the central South Yellow Sea area (SYSA) and Min-Zhe belt (MZB), East China Sea. Based on the high-resolution temporal sequences of total carbon (TC) and total organic carbon (TOC) contents, we reconstructed the annual variations of historical marine carbon storage, and explored the influence of terrestrial and marine sources on carbon burial at the centennial scale. The estimated TC storage over 100 years was 1.18×10⁸ t in the SYSA and 1.45×10⁹ t in the MZB. The corrected TOC storage fluxes at the centennial scale ranged from 17 to 28 t/(km²·a)in the SYSA and from 56 to 148 t/(km²·a) in the MZB. The decrease of terrestrial materials and the increase of marine primary production suggest that the TOC buried in the sediments in the SYSA and MZB was mainly derived from the marine autogenetic source. In the MZB, two depletion events occurred in TC and TOC storage from 1985 to 1987 and 2003 to 2006, which were coeval with the water impoundment in the Gezhouba and Three Gorges dams, respectively. The high-resolution records of the carbon storage rates and fluxes in the SYSA and MZB reflect the synchronous responses to human activities and provide an important reference for assessing the carbon sequestration capacity of the marginal seas of China.

Key words: centennial-scale carbon storage|sediment|Min-Zhe belt|South Yellow Sea area|East China Sea

Received: 2016-09-14 Revised: 2016-09-22

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