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Ejarque E, Freixa A, Vazquez E, et al. Quality and reactivity of dissolved organic matter in a Mediterranean river across hydrological and spatial gradients. Sci Total Environ. 2017;599:1802-1812doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.05.113.
Ejarque, E., Freixa, A., Vazquez, E., Guarch, A., Amalfitano, S., Fazi, S., Romaní, A. M., & Butturini, A. (2017). Quality and reactivity of dissolved organic matter in a Mediterranean river across hydrological and spatial gradients. The Science of the total environment, 5991802-1812. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.05.113
Ejarque, Elisabet, et al. "Quality and reactivity of dissolved organic matter in a Mediterranean river across hydrological and spatial gradients." The Science of the total environment vol. 599 (2017): 1802-1812. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.05.113
Ejarque E, Freixa A, Vazquez E, Guarch A, Amalfitano S, Fazi S, Romaní AM, Butturini A. Quality and reactivity of dissolved organic matter in a Mediterranean river across hydrological and spatial gradients. Sci Total Environ. 2017 Dec 01;599:1802-1812. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.05.113. Epub 2017 May 20. PMID: 28545207.
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Sci Total Environ. 2017 Dec 01;599:1802-1812. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.05.113. Epub 2017 May 20.

Quality and reactivity of dissolved organic matter in a Mediterranean river across hydrological and spatial gradients.

The Science of the total environment

Elisabet Ejarque, Anna Freixa, Eusebi Vazquez, Alba Guarch, Stefano Amalfitano, Stefano Fazi, Anna M Romaní, Andrea Butturini

Affiliations

  1. WasserCluster Lunz - Biologische Station, Lunz am See, Austria; Department of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Environmental Sciences, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain. Electronic address: [email protected].
  2. Catalan Institute for Water Research (ICRA), Girona, Spain.
  3. Department of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Environmental Sciences, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
  4. Water Research Institute, National Research Council of Italy (IRSA-CNR), Rome, Italy.
  5. GRECO, Institute of Aquatic Ecology, Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Girona, Girona, Spain.

PMID: 28545207 DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.05.113

Abstract

Understanding DOM transport and reactivity in rivers is essential to having a complete picture of the global carbon cycle. In this study, we explore the effects of hydrological variability and downstream transport on dissolved organic matter (DOM) dynamics in a Mediterranean river. We sampled the main stem of the river Tordera from the source to the sea, over a range of fifteen hydrological conditions including extreme events (flood and drought). By exploring spatial and temporal gradients of DOM fluorescence properties, river hydrology was found to be a significant predictor of DOM spatial heterogeneity. An additional space-resolved mass balance analysis performed on four contrasting hydrological conditions revealed that this was due to a shift in the biogeochemical function of the river. Flood conditions caused a conservative transport of DOM, generating a homogeneous, humic-like spatial profile of DOM quality. Lower flows induced a non-conservative, reactive transport of DOM, which enhanced the spatial heterogeneity of DOM properties. Moreover, the downstream evolution of DOM chemostatic behaviour revealed that the role of hydrology in regulating DOM properties increased gradually downstream, indicating an organised inter-dependency between the spatial and the temporal dimensions. Overall, our findings reveal that riverine DOM dynamics is in constant change owing to varying hydrological conditions, and emphasize that in order to fully understand the role of rivers in the global carbon cycle, it is necessary to take into account the full range of hydrological variability, from floods to droughts.

Copyright © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Chemostasis; Dissolved organic matter; Fluorescence spectroscopy; Hydrological extremes; Mediterranean river; River continuum

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