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Young, Old, and Weathered Carbon-Part 1: Using Radiocarbon and Stable Isotopes to Identify Carbon Sources in an Alkaline, Humic Lake

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2016

Evelyn M Keaveney ,
Paula J Reimer  and
Robert H Foy
Evelyn M Keaveney*
Affiliation:
14CHRONO Centre, School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology, Queen's University Belfast BT71NN, UK
Paula J Reimer
Affiliation:
14CHRONO Centre, School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology, Queen's University Belfast BT71NN, UK
Robert H Foy
Affiliation:
Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute, Newforge Lane, Belfast BT95PX, UK School of Biological Sciences, Queen's University Belfast BT71NN, UK
*
2.Corresponding author. Email: e.keaveney@qub.ac.uk.
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Abstract

This article presents a case study of Lower Lough Erne, a humic, alkaline lake in northwest Ireland, and uses the radiocarbon method to determine the source and age of carbon to establish whether terrestrial carbon is utilized by heterotrophic organisms or buried in sediment. Stepped combustion was used to estimate the degree of the burial of terrestrial carbon in surface sediment. Δ14C, δ13C, and δ15N values were measured for phytoplankton, dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC), dissolved organic carbon (DOC), and particulate organic carbon (POC). Δ14C values were used to indicate the presence of different sources of carbon, including bedrock-derived inorganic carbon, “modern,” “recent,” “subsurface,” and “subfossil” terrestrial carbon in the lake. The use of 14C in conjunction with novel methods (e.g. stepped combustion) allows the determination of the pathway of terrestrial carbon in the system, which has implications for regional and global carbon cycling.

Type
Articles
Information
Radiocarbon , Volume 57 , Issue 3 , 2015 , pp. 407 - 423
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 by the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona 

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