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An unshakable carbon budget for the Himalaya

Nature Geoscience volume 14, pages 745–750 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

The erosion and weathering of mountain ranges exert a key control on the long-term (105–106 yr) cycling of carbon between Earth’s surface and crust. The net carbon budget of a mountain range reflects the co-existence of multiple carbon sources and sinks, with corresponding fluxes remaining difficult to quantify. Uncertain responses of these carbon fluxes due to the stochastic nature of erosional processes further complicate the extrapolation of short-term observations to longer, climatically relevant timescales. Here, we quantify the evolution of the organic and inorganic carbon fluxes in response to the 2015 Gorkha earthquake (Mw 7.8) in the central Himalaya. We find that the Himalayan erosion acts as a net carbon sink due mainly to efficient biospheric organic carbon export. Our high-resolution time series encompassing four monsoon seasons before and after the Gorkha earthquake reveal that coseismic landslides did not significantly perturb large-scale Himalayan sediment and carbon fluxes. This muted response of the central Himalaya to a geologically frequent perturbation such as the Gorkha earthquake further suggests that our estimates are representative of at least interglacial timescales.

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Fig. 1: Map of the central Himalaya and location of the studied drainage basin.
Fig. 2: Total water discharge and sediment yield of the Narayani River during different monsoon seasons.
Fig. 3: OCbio, Casil + Mgsil and SO42–carb as a function of the discharge of the Narayani River.
Fig. 4: Total carbon fluxes and mean net erosional carbon budget for the Narayani basin through four monsoon seasons.

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Data availability

All data analysed in this study are available in the Research Collection of ETH Zurich at http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11850/487683. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

L.M., M.L. and T.E. were supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (no. 200021_166067). C. F.-L. and J.L. were supported by the ANR Calimero. We thank K. B. Adhikari from the hydrological station in Narayanghat for the daily sampling. E. Tipper (University of Cambridge) is thanked for kindly providing the confluence samples.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Geological Institute, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

    Lena Märki, Maarten Lupker, Negar Haghipour, Fanny Leuenberger-West & Timothy Eglinton

  2. Centre de Recherches Pétrographiques et Géochimiques (CRPG), CNRS – Université de Lorraine, Vandœuvre-lès-Nancy, France

    Christian France-Lanord & Jérôme Lavé

  3. Department of Geosciences, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA

    Sean Gallen

  4. Department of Geology, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal

    Ananta P. Gajurel

  5. Ion Beam Physics, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

    Negar Haghipour

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  1. Lena Märki
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Contributions

L.M. and M.L. designed the study. M.L., C.F.-L., J.L., A.P.G. and S.G. organized and maintained daily sampling in Narayanghat. J.L. provided the depth profile samples, and L.M., M.L., C.F.-L., J.L. and S.G. conducted the soil sampling. L.M., N.H. and F.L.-W. prepared the samples and preformed the measurements. S.G. conducted the landslide volume calculation. L.M., M.L. and T.E. made the carbon flux calculations. All authors contributed to the interpretation of the data and the redaction of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Lena Märki.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Peer review information Nature Geoscience thanks Jin Wang, Kathryn Clark and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editor: James Super.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Measured discharge, calculated direct discharge and cumulative sediment flux of the Narayani River for the monsoon seasons 2015-2017.

Daily discharge (dark blue; ref. 28) and calculated direct discharge (light blue; calculated with a digital filter55 as described in ref. 27) for the months April – October of the years 2015, 2016 and 2017. The cumulative sediment flux is shown in grey and was only measured for the monsoon season (June-September).

Extended Data Fig. 2 Daily sediment load of the Narayani as a function of the total and direct discharge.

Daily sediment load data of the four studied years during the monsoon months plotted in log-log space against (a) the total river discharge (data from ref. 28) and (b) the direct river discharge (calculated with a digital filter55 as described in ref. 27) of the Narayani River at the sampling station in Narayanghat. The black line shows the linear correlation between the direct discharge and the sediment load with the one-sigma confidence intervals.

Extended Data Fig. 3 Mixing model used to disentangle the concentrations of petrogenic and biospheric organic carbon in suspended sediments.

TOC-1 plotted against the fraction modern of the bulk suspended sediment colored as a function of the sampling year. The biospheric and petrogenic endmembers used in the mixing model for disentangling OCbio and OCpetro inputs are schematically shown.

Extended Data Fig. 4 Biospheric organic carbon export in the water column of the Narayani River.

OCbio export per day [kg*m-2day-1] at different depths in the Narayani River calculated with depth profile samples and water velocity data27. The mean channel depth at the sampling station lies between 15-20 m (ref. 27).

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 5 TOC concentration and fraction modern in sediments of rivers close to the sampling station.

(a) TOC concentration and (b) fraction modern in suspended sediments of the two tributaries shortly upstream the confluence and of two stations in the Narayani river colored as a function of the sampling date.

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 6 Cl− and SO4 2-concentrations as a function of the river discharge in Narayanghat.

(a) Cl− and (b) SO42− concentrations plotted against the discharge in log-log space. The anion concentrations of the samples 2015-2017 were measured and corrected for atmospheric input. Exponential functions (blacklines with the one-sigma confidence interval shown by the dashed lines) through the measured values were used to determine the concentrations of the 2010 samples with the river discharge (Q): [Cl] = e9.57 * Q-0.79 (r2=0.73); [SO4] = e7.45 * Q-0.3 (r2=0.51). For Cl, the 2017 concentrations were not taken into account (see Supplementary Information).

Extended Data Fig. 7 Cl versus Na concentrations of the measured monsoon seasons in Narayanghat.

Cl and Na concentrations are corrected for atmospheric input.

Extended Data Fig. 8 Sum of cations as a function of the Re concentration of global and Himalayan rivers.

Literature data are from refs. 10,15,31,32,61,62 and are illustrated by the diamonds. Dashed lines show linear regression between the measured sum of cations and Re concentrations of all the rivers (black) and of the Himalayan rivers (blue). Circles display the measured mean sum of cations in the Narayani per monsoon season as a function of the estimated Re concentration using the linear correlation of Himalayan rivers.

Extended Data Table 1 Gorkha earthquake-triggered landslide volumes and lowering rates
Full size table
Extended Data Table 2 Soil samples used to define the biospheric organic carbon endmember of the mixing model
Full size table

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Information.

Source data

Source Data Fig. 2

Discharge and sediment load data of the Narayani River.

Source Data Fig. 3

Fraction modern and TOC concentration measured on suspended sediments, major ions concentrations measured on filtered water samples and calculated chemical weathering and OC export fluxes.

Source Data Fig. 4

Total calculated carbon fluxes associated with erosion in the Narayani catchment.

Source Data Extended Data Fig. 4

Fraction modern and TOC concentrations of suspended sediment samples within the water column of the Narayani.

Source Data Extended Data Fig. 5

Suspended sediment samples from rivers close to the sampling station in Narayanghat.

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Märki, L., Lupker, M., France-Lanord, C. et al. An unshakable carbon budget for the Himalaya. Nat. Geosci. 14, 745–750 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-021-00815-z

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