Upland carbon

Soft upland waters are aggressive to most metals, their behaviour depending to some extent on pH values as discussed on p. 2.53. They are inevitably unsaturated with respect to calcium carbonate and it is not usually practicable to modify the carbonate equilibrium to make them non-aggressive. 

The partial pressure of C02 in the soil air controls the concentration of both dissolved C02 and undissociated carbonic acid. At 0.003 atm of C02 (g) as a reference level for soils, [H2C03°] is about 1.04 x 10 4 M (Lindsay, 1979). At a normal atmospheric level of 0.0003 atm C02 (g), [H2C03°] is approximately 1.04 x 10 5 M. In most soils, C02 (g) is higher than in the atmosphere. C02 is released from soil and plant root respiration. In flooded soils, C02 (g) partial pressure increases to 0.01-0.3 atm, about 1000-fold higher than normal upland soils due to strong microbiological activity (Lindsay, 1979). 

Even within the subset of boreal lakes there is probably a direct relationship between external inputs of organic matter and their importance to zooplankton (Meili, M. Fry, B. Kling, G. W. unpublished data). In the case of Lake N2 and other upland arctic lakes, thermokarst processes and active erosion of shoreline peat banks are much less important than they are in coastal plain lakes (62, 75, 103). In addition, DOC made up less of the total organic carbon in Lake N2 than it did in the humic lake studied by Hessen (72) the ratio of DIC DOC.POC in Lake N2 was 25 8 1 (Table II), whereas in the humic lake the ratio was 1.6 21 1. The lower loading rates of particulate carbon and the smaller relative amounts of DOM in Lake N2 may explain the observation that pelagic productivity depended mainly on new algal production. 

This major input of DOM from macrophytes is not restricted to lakes, but is also realized in other aquatic ecosystems. DOM export from watersheds in lotic ecosystems is directly related to annual runoff, but significantly greater in swamp-draining streams compared with upland-draining streams (Mulholland and Kuenzler, 1979 see Chapter 2 and 6). In the Hudson Estuary, planktonic bacterial production is 3 to 6 times greater than primary production (Findlay et al., 1992). DOC derived from submerged aquatic plants in part supports the difference in bacterial carbon uptake and planktonic primary production. 

Mulholland, P. J., and E. J. Kuenzler. 1979. Organic carbon export from upland and forest wetland watersheds. Limnology and Oceanography 24 960-999. 

Boyer, E. W., G. M. Hornberger, K. E. Bencala, and D. McKnight. 1996. Overview of a simple model describing variation of dissolved organic carbon in an upland catchment. Ecological Modeling 86 183-188. 

Dawson, J. C., D. Hope, M. S. Cresser, and M. F. Billett. 1995. Downstream changes in free carbon dioxide in an upland catchment from northeast Scotland. Journal of Environmental Quality 24 699-706. 

Williams, P. T. (2005). Waste Treatment and Disposal, John Wiley Sons, West Sussex, UK. Worrall, F., Reed, M. S., Warburton, J., and BurtT. (2003). Carbon budget for a British upland peat catchment. Sci. Total Environ. 312,133-146. 

Chang Chien, S. W., Wang, M. C., Hsu, J. H., and Seshaiah, K. (2006). Influence of fertilizers applied to a paddy-upland rotation on characteristics of soil organic carbon and humic acids. J. Agric. Food Chem. 54, 6790-6799. 

For ecosystems, there is a concept of environmental services (e.g., soil function). Soil conservation provides a range of obvious benefits, including the preservation of land use and fertility, supporting the production of fibers, food, or biofuels. These services have widened over time to encapsulate benefits of carbon sequestration or biodiversity protection. It is relatively easy to place values on the productive capacity in the former examples. It is somewhat harder to find the value of the latter uses, but as the Stern report (Stem 2006) illustrated, it is by no means impossible to calculate the value of, say, an upland peat bog. 

Johnson, D., Leake, J. R., Ostle, N., Ineson, P. Read, D. J. (2002). In situ (C02)- C pulse-labeling of upland grassland demonstrates a rapid pathway of carbon flux from arbuscular mycorrhizal mycelia to the soil. New Phytologist, 153, 327-34. 

The organic carbon in upland runoff is expected to be refractory and predominantly terrestrial in origin (Hedges et al. 1986). The local drainage basins of Amazon floodplain lakes are generally forested and local runoff is... 

Edwards A. C. and Cresser M. S. (1987) Relationships between ultraviolet absorbance and total organic carbon in two upland catchments. Water Res. 21, 49-56. 

Figure 8.10 Frequency plots of the total organic carbon (TOC) levels and incident rainfall for a Scottish upland water...

Nittany Mountain is a synclinal mountain. It is cored with resistant sandstones, less resistant shales and siltstones. Tilted shale beds make up the lower, more gentle slopes of Nittany Mountain which stands more than 900 feet above the general upland surface of the valley. This upland is underlain by nearly 8000 feet of folded and faulted carbonate rocks which have been arched upward to form a... 

DOC represents a large part of the carbon export of many upland catchments, and is the major source of water colour. It is a significant component of the upland... 

---