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Biogeochemistry of organic matter and associated elements along the river-estuary-ocean continuum
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Study on GDGTs in Sediments of Jiulong River Estuary
P-C1-12-S
Zhangyu Cheng* , State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science(Xiamen University)
Fengling Yu, State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science(Xiamen University)
Xiaoyan Ruan, State Key Laboratory of Biogeology and Environmental Geology(China University of Geosciences)
Presenter Email: zy3896966@126.com |
| Estuary as a confluence of the land and ocean, river systems has transported large amount terrigenous organic matter into the estuary, joining the global carbon cycle system. At the meantime, due to the obvious salinity gradient and complex hydrodynamic conditions, estuary has become the hot spot of global carbon circulation research. Despite the terrigenous organic matter, the sources of organic matter in estuarine sediments include marine aquatic organisms, higher plants,bacteria, fungi and other microorganisms, as well as modern human activities. It is important to understand the compositions of the different-originated organic matter in the estuarine sediments and before estimating the carbon burial/flux of the estuary system.
Nowadays,GDGTs has been widely used in tracing the sources of organic matters due to its stability and high sensitivity. Recently, there have been some studies on GDGTs'behavior in the estuary and coastal areas and its environmental impact,but because of the complexity of the estuarine environment,there are still many problems remain to be solved, such as: 1) Sources of different types of GDGTs are still rarely discussed, while this issue is crucial for determining the provenance of organic matter; 2) How does the complexity of estuarine environment affect the preservation of GDGTs? To sum up, the question is: what is the main controlling mechanism of GDGTs distribution and behavior in estuary sediments?
Jiulong River as an important freshwater river in southern Fujian, scientists have already researched on its physical and chemical characteristics from river basin to the estuary for many years. Such researches provide a rich environmental background information for understanding the system, which will help understand the characteristics of the GDGTs in the system.
To combine the scientific problems with the feature of Jiulong River estuary area, the research goal of this study is taking Jiulong River estuary as an example to analyse the behavior of GDGTs, and to explore its main mechanism in the estuarine system. In addition to the GDGTs, sedimentary n-alkanes have also been analyzed for comparison.
The results of this study will be of great scientific significance for better applying GDGTs to the studies on sources of estuarine organic matter.
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