Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Century-Long Increasing Trend And Variability Of Dissolved Organic Carbon Export From The Mississippi River Basin Driven By Natural And Anthropogenic Forcing, Wei Ren, Hanqin Tian, Wei-Jun Cai, Steven E. Lohrenz, Charles S. Hopkinson, Wei-Jen Huang, Jia Yang, Bo Tao, Shufen Pan, Ruoying He

Plant and Soil Sciences Faculty Publications

There has been considerable debate as to how natural forcing and anthropogenic activities alter the timing and magnitude of the delivery of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) to the coastal ocean, which has ramifications for the ocean carbon budget, land-ocean interactions, and coastal life. Here we present an analysis of DOC export from the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico during 1901–2010 as influenced by changes in climate, land use and management practices, atmospheric CO₂, and nitrogen deposition, through the integration of observational data with a coupled hydrologic/biogeochemical land model. Model simulations show that DOC export in the …