Do ENSO and Coastal Development Enhance Coastal Burial of Terrestrial Carbon?

Macreadie, PI; Rolph, TC; Boyd, R; Schröder-Adams, CJ; Skilbeck, CG

Do ENSO and Coastal Development Enhance Coastal Burial of Terrestrial Carbon?

Macreadie, PI

Rolph, TC Boyd, R Schröder-Adams, CJ Skilbeck, CG

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Publication Type:: Journal Article
Citation:: PLoS ONE, 2015, 10 (12)
Issue Date:: 2015-12-01

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Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Macreadie, PI https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7362-0882	en_US
dc.contributor.author	Rolph, TC	en_US
dc.contributor.author	Boyd, R	en_US
dc.contributor.author	Schröder-Adams, CJ	en_US
dc.contributor.author	Skilbeck, CG https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1634-963X	en_US
dc.date.available	2015-11-26	en_US
dc.date.issued	2015-12-01	en_US
dc.identifier.citation	PLoS ONE, 2015, 10 (12)	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/121685
dc.description.abstract	© 2015 Macreadie et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Carbon cycling on the east coast of Australia has the potential to be strongly affected by El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) intensification and coastal development (industrialization and urbanization). We performed paleoreconstructions of estuarine sediments from a seagrass-dominated estuary on the east coast of Australia (Tuggerah Lake, New South Wales) to test the hypothesis that millennial-scale ENSO intensification and European settlement in Australia have increased the transfer of organic carbon from land into coastal waters. Our data show that carbon accumulation rates within coastal sediments increased significantly during periods of maximum millennial-scale ENSO intensity ("super-ENSO") and coastal development. We suggest that ENSO and coastal development destabilize and liberate terrestrial soil carbon, which, during rainfall events (e.g., La Niña), washes into estuaries and becomes trapped and buried by coastal vegetation (seagrass in this case). Indeed, periods of high carbon burial were generally characterized as having rapid sedimentation rates, higher content of fine-grained sediments, and increased content of wood and charcoal fragments. These results, though preliminary, suggest that coastal development and ENSO intensificationboth of which are predicted to increase over the coming centurycan enhance capture and burial of terrestrial carbon by coastal ecosystems. These findings have important relevance for current efforts to build an understanding of terrestrial- marine carbon connectivity into global carbon budgets.	en_US
dc.relation	http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DE130101084
dc.relation.ispartof	PLoS ONE	en_US
dc.relation.isbasedon	10.1371/journal.pone.0145136	en_US
dc.subject.classification	General Science & Technology	en_US
dc.subject.mesh	Models, Theoretical	en_US
dc.subject.mesh	Australia	en_US
dc.subject.mesh	Carbon Footprint	en_US
dc.subject.mesh	Lakes	en_US
dc.title	Do ENSO and Coastal Development Enhance Coastal Burial of Terrestrial Carbon?	en_US
dc.type	Journal Article
utslib.citation.volume	12	en_US
utslib.citation.volume	10	en_US
utslib.for	0502 Environmental Science and Management	en_US
utslib.for	0602 Ecology	en_US
pubs.embargo.period	Not known	en_US
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/DVC (Research)
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Science
utslib.copyright.status	open_access
pubs.issue	12	en_US
pubs.publication-status	Published	en_US
pubs.volume	10	en_US

Abstract:

© 2015 Macreadie et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Carbon cycling on the east coast of Australia has the potential to be strongly affected by El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) intensification and coastal development (industrialization and urbanization). We performed paleoreconstructions of estuarine sediments from a seagrass-dominated estuary on the east coast of Australia (Tuggerah Lake, New South Wales) to test the hypothesis that millennial-scale ENSO intensification and European settlement in Australia have increased the transfer of organic carbon from land into coastal waters. Our data show that carbon accumulation rates within coastal sediments increased significantly during periods of maximum millennial-scale ENSO intensity ("super-ENSO") and coastal development. We suggest that ENSO and coastal development destabilize and liberate terrestrial soil carbon, which, during rainfall events (e.g., La Niña), washes into estuaries and becomes trapped and buried by coastal vegetation (seagrass in this case). Indeed, periods of high carbon burial were generally characterized as having rapid sedimentation rates, higher content of fine-grained sediments, and increased content of wood and charcoal fragments. These results, though preliminary, suggest that coastal development and ENSO intensificationboth of which are predicted to increase over the coming centurycan enhance capture and burial of terrestrial carbon by coastal ecosystems. These findings have important relevance for current efforts to build an understanding of terrestrial- marine carbon connectivity into global carbon budgets.

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http://hdl.handle.net/10453/121685