Rivers are leaking ancient carbon back into the atmosphere

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By Madeleine Cuff, New Scientist. 

Excerpt: Rivers around the world are leaking ancient carbon back into the atmosphere. The finding has taken scientists by surprise and suggests human activities are damaging the natural landscape far more than first thought. Researchers already knew rivers released carbon dioxide and methane as part of the global carbon cycle – the short-term movement of gases that happens as living things grow and decompose. They are thought to emit around 2 gigatonnes of this carbon each year. But when Josh Dean at the University of Bristol, UK, and his colleagues set out to determine how old this carbon really is, they found that around 60 per cent of global river emissions are from thousands-of-years-old stores. Ancient carbon is trapped in rocks, peat bogs and wetlands. The findings suggest that as much as 1 gigatonne of it is being released back into the atmosphere each year through rivers. ...The pressing question now is why rivers are releasing so much ancient carbon. It could be due to climate change and other human activities disrupting the natural landscape, says Dean, pointing out that the carbon being released by rivers seems to have been “getting older” since the 1990s.... 

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