Comprehensive assessment of dissolved organic matter processing in the Amazon River and its major tributaries revealed by positive and negative electrospray mass spectrometry and NMR spectroscopy.

Rivers are natural biogeochemical systems shaping the fates of dissolved organic matter (DOM) from leaving soils to reaching the oceans. This study focuses on Amazon basin DOM processing employing negative and positive electrospray ionization Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (ESI[±] FT-ICR MS) and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) to reveal effects of major processes on the compositional space and structural characteristics of black, white and clear water systems. These include non-conservative mixing at the confluences of (1) Solimões and the Negro River, (2) the Amazon River and the Madeira River, and (3) in-stream processing of Amazon River DOM between the Madeira River and the Tapajós River. The Negro River (black water) supplies more highly oxygenated and high molecular weight compounds, whereas the Solimões and Madeira Rivers (white water) contribute more CHNO and CHOS molecules to the Amazon River main stem. Aliphatic CHO and abundant CHNO compounds prevail in Tapajos River DOM (clear water), likely originating from primary production. Sorption onto particles and heterotrophic microbial degradation are probably the principal mechanisms for the observed changes in DOM composition in the Amazon River and its tributaries.

Erratum: Large emissions from floodplain trees close the Amazon methane budget.

This corrects the article DOI: 10.1038/nature24639.

Large emissions from floodplain trees close the Amazon methane budget.

Wetlands are the largest global source of atmospheric methane (CH4), a potent greenhouse gas. However, methane emission inventories from the Amazon floodplain, the largest natural geographic source of CH4 in the tropics, consistently underestimate the atmospheric burden of CH4 determined via remote sensing and inversion modelling, pointing to a major gap in our understanding of the contribution of these ecosystems to CH4 emissions. Here we report CH4 fluxes from the stems of 2,357 individual Amazonian floodplain trees from 13 locations across the central Amazon basin. We find that escape of soil gas through wetland trees is the dominant source of regional CH4 emissions. Methane fluxes from Amazon tree stems were up to 200 times larger than emissions reported for temperate wet forests and tropical peat swamp forests, representing the largest non-ebullitive wetland fluxes observed. Emissions from trees had an average stable carbon isotope value (δ13C) of -66.2 ± 6.4 per mil, consistent with a soil biogenic origin. We estimate that floodplain trees emit 15.1 ± 1.8 to 21.2 ± 2.5 teragrams of CH4 a year, in addition to the 20.5 ± 5.3 teragrams a year emitted regionally from other sources. Furthermore, we provide a 'top-down' regional estimate of CH4 emissions of 42.7 ± 5.6 teragrams of CH4 a year for the Amazon basin, based on regular vertical lower-troposphere CH4 profiles covering the period 2010-2013. We find close agreement between our 'top-down' and combined 'bottom-up' estimates, indicating that large CH4 emissions from trees adapted to permanent or seasonal inundation can account for the emission source that is required to close the Amazon CH4 budget. Our findings demonstrate the importance of tree stem surfaces in mediating approximately half of all wetland CH4 emissions in the Amazon floodplain, a region that represents up to one-third of the global wetland CH4 source when trees are combined with other emission sources.