Wood-based carbon storage in the Mackenzie river delta: the world's largest mapped riverine wood deposit

Sendrowski, A., Wohl, E., Hilton, R., Kramer, N. and Ascough, P. (2023) Wood-based carbon storage in the Mackenzie river delta: the world's largest mapped riverine wood deposit. Geophysical Research Letters, 50(7), e2022GL100913. (doi: 10.1029/2022GL100913)

Abstract

The Mackenzie River Delta (MRD) has been recognized as an important host of river-derived wood deposits, and Mackenzie River wood has been found across the Arctic Ocean. Nevertheless, we lack estimates of the amount of carbon stored as wood and its age in the delta, representing a gap in carbon cycle estimates. Here, we use very high-resolution satellite imagery and deep learning to map wood deposits in the MRD, combining this with field data to measure the stock and age of wood-based carbon. We find >400,000 individual large wood deposits, collectively storing 3.1 × 1012 g-C, equating to 2 × 106 g-C ha−1 across the delta. Sampled wood pieces date from 690 AD to 2015 AD but are mostly young with ∼40% of the wood samples formed after 1955 AD. These estimates represent a minimum bound on an important surficial, potentially reactive, carbon pool compared to other deeper carbon stocks in permafrost zones.

• Item Type: Articles
• Additional Information: Geospatial support for this work provided by the Polar Geospatial Center under NSF-OPP awards 1043681 and 1559691. This work utilized resources from the University of Colorado Boulder Research Computing Group, which is supported by the National Science Foundation (awards ACI-1532235 and ACI-1532236), the University of Colorado Boulder, and Colorado State University. Field work, acquired imagery, and radiocarbon analyses were funded via a NSF-NERC grant to RGH (NE/R017530/1) and to EW (NSF 1740382).
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Ascough, Dr Philippa

Creator Roles

Ascough, P.: Data curation, Formal analysis, Methodology, Software, Validation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review and editing

• Authors: Sendrowski, A., Wohl, E., Hilton, R., Kramer, N., and Ascough, P.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre
• Journal Name: Geophysical Research Letters
• Publisher: Wiley
• ISSN: 0094-8276
• ISSN (Online): 1944-8007
• Published Online: 11 April 2023
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2023 The Authors
• First Published: First published in Geophysical Research Letters 50(7):e2022GL100913
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons license