Abstract
During the last few decades, sedimentary carbons gain great concerns of research interest among the scientific committee worldwide due to their adverse impact on aquatic chemistry, ecology, and hence human health along with global climate change. In the present study, we investigated the spatial distribution of mass concentration of sedimentary carbon (viz. black carbon: BC, and its components, char and soot) along with their burial fluxes in the surface sediments of the South Yellow Sea (SYS). The concentration of sedimentary carbon is measured by using an emerging method of thermal/optical reflectance. The observed BC concentration is found in the range of 0.02–1.02 mg g−1 with a mean value of 0.49 ± 0.26 mg g−1. The mean burial fluxes of BC, char, and soot also have a similar spatial variation to their concentration with the mean value along with relative standard deviation (in bracket) 22.43 ± 12.49 (~ 56%), 5.90 ± 3.99 (~ 68%), and 16.53 ± 10.67 (65%), respectively. Relatively lower value of char/soot ratio, i.e., 0.48 ± 0.22, indicates the dominance of soot in surface sediments that could be mainly derived from the fossil fuel combustion which is further confirmed from emission inventory data suggesting maximum contribution, i.e., ~ 66–80%, of the total BC emission emitted from residential and industrial emission sources. The back trajectories analysis revealed a significant impact of long-range transportation on BC concentration in the surface sediments of SYS. Further study of BC concentrations in sea sediments and their interaction with other organic/inorganic compounds in continental shelves is highly needed for a better understanding of the global carbon cycle.
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Acknowledgments
One of the authors, Dr. Shani Tiwari, is also thankful to Shandong University, China, for the financial support under the International Postdoctoral Exchange Program. We acknowledge the use of Peking University (PKU) Inventory data, MEERA–2 reanalysis data, and National Centre for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) for synoptic meteorological data and NOAA HYSPLIT model for back trajectory analysis. We are also thankful to the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions to improve the manuscript.
Funding
This research has received funding from the Key Research and Development Program of Shandong Province (2017GHY215005), Laboratory for Marine Geology, Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology (Grant No. MGQNLM-KF201703), and Taishan Scholars (No. ts201712003).
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Tiwari, S., Kun, L. & Chen, B. Spatial variability of sedimentary carbon in South Yellow Sea, China: impact of anthropogenic emission and long-range transportation. Environ Sci Pollut Res 27, 23812–23823 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-08686-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-08686-4