Kathryn Schreiner
Assistant Professor, University of Minnesota Duluth
Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry and Large Lakes Observatory
The Source and Fate of Organic Carbon from Land to Sea
The delivery of organic carbon by rivers to coastal margins is an important connection between the short-cycling biospheric carbon cycle and the long-cycling geologic carbon cycle, since storage of terrestrial organic carbon in marine and lacustrine sediments is one of the main mechanisms of sequestration of biospheric organic carbon in the geologic carbon cycle. And yet, much is still unknown about the chemistry, sources, and ultimate fate of terrigenous organic carbon on marine shelves, even as the global carbon cycle is being significantly affected by a variety of anthropogenic mechanisms, including climate warming, land use change, and pollution. Here, I will explore some of these questions and will address them using examples from my own work studying the formation and chemistry of soil organic matter and the delivery and stabilization of terrestrial organic carbon in coastal regions from a range of environments and latitudes. The “source to sink” fate of terrestrial organic carbon will be followed, starting from vegetation and soil microbial communities, through riverine transport to deltaic and coastal environments, and ultimately to the long-term storage of terrestrial organic carbon in marine sediments.
