Watershed carbon yield derived from gauge observations and river network connectivity in the United States

Authors: QUI, HAN - University Of Wisconsin; Zhang, Xuesong; YANG, ANNI - University Of Oklahoma; WICKLAND, KIMBERLY - Us Geological Survey (USGS); STETS, EDWARD - Us Geological Survey (USGS); CHEN, MIN - University Of Wisconsin

Submitted to: Scientific Data
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 4/18/2023
Publication Date: 5/13/2023
Citation: Qui, H., Zhang, X., Yang, A., Wickland, K.P., Stets, E.G., Chen, M. 2023. Watershed carbon yield derived from gauge observations and river network connectivity in the United States. Scientific Data. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-023-02162-7.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-023-02162-7

Interpretive Summary: A large amount of carbon is transported from land to rivers, which play a critical role linking the global carbon cycle. There is still a lack of spatial data quantifying how different river reaches impact the gain or loss of the carbon therein. Here, we derived riverine carbon loads at over 1000 USGS gauges, which was further combined with the National Hydrography Dataset Plus to provide spatially explicit estimates of the gain or loss of caron for river reaches across the U.S. This dataset is expected to further future research elucidating the role of rivers in the carbon cycle.

Technical Abstract: River networks play a critical role in the global carbon cycle. Although global/continental scale riverine carbon cycle studies demonstrate the significance of rivers and streams for linking land and coastal regions, the lack of spatially distributed riverine carbon load data represents a gap for quantifying riverine carbon gain or loss in different regions, understanding mechanisms and factors that influence the riverine carbon cycle, and verifying simulations of aquatic carbon cycle models at fine scales. Here, we (1) derive the riverine load of particulate organic carbon (POC) and dissolved organic carbon (DOC) for over 1,000 hydrologic stations across the Conterminous United States (CONUS) and (2) use the upstream-downstream drainage information for over 80,000 catchment units within the National Hydrography Dataset Plus (NHDPlus) to estimate spatial distribution of riverine POC and DOC gain or loss. The new riverine carbon load and spatial gain/loss represent a unique contribution to support future studies for understanding riverine carbon cycle, verifying process-based models, and constraining the coupled aquatic carbon cycle on refined scales.