The importance of hydrology in routing terrestrial carbon to the atmosphere via global streams and rivers.

SignificanceStream/river carbon dioxide (CO) emission has significant spatial and seasonal variations critical for understanding its macroecosystem controls and plumbing of the terrestrial carbon budget. We relied on direct fluvial CO partial pressure measurements and seasonally varying gas transfer velocity and river network surface area estimates to resolve reach-level seasonal variations of the flux at the global scale. The percentage of terrestrial primary production (GPP) shunted into rivers that ultimately contributes to CO evasion increases with discharge across regions, due to a stronger response in fluvial CO evasion to discharge than GPP.

Greenhouse gases emissions in rivers of the Tibetan Plateau.

Greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions from streams are important to regional biogeochemical budgets. This study is one of the first to incorporate stream GHGs (CO, CH and NO) concentrations and emissions in rivers of the Tibetan Plateau. With one-time sampling from 32 sites in rivers of the plateau, we found that most of the rivers were supersaturated with CO, CH and NO during the study period.

Correction: Aged dissolved organic carbon exported from rivers of the Tibetan Plateau.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.

Aged dissolved organic carbon exported from rivers of the Tibetan Plateau.

The role played by river networks in regional and global carbon cycle is receiving increasing attention. Despite the potential of radiocarbon measurements (14C) to elucidate sources and cycling of different riverine carbon pools, there remain large regions such as the climate-sensitive Tibetan Plateau for which no data are available. Here we provide new 14C data on dissolved organic carbon (DOC) from three large Asian rivers (the Yellow, Yangtze and Yarlung Tsangpo Rivers) running on the Tibetan Plateau and present the carbon transportation pattern in rivers of the plateau versus other river system in the world.