Carbon and nutrient release from experimental inundation of agricultural and forested floodplain soil and vegetation: influence of floodplain land use on the development of hypoxic blackwater during floods
Xiaoying Liu A D , Robyn J. Watts A B , Julia A. Howitt A C and Nicole McCasker A
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations
A Institute for Land, Water and Society, Charles Sturt University, PO Box 789, Albury, NSW 2640, Australia.
B School of Environmental Sciences, Charles Sturt University, PO Box 789, Albury, NSW 2640, Australia.
C School of Agricultural and Wine Sciences, Charles Sturt University, Locked Bag 588, Wagga Wagga, NSW 2678, Australia.
D Corresponding author. Email: xiliu@csu.edu.au
Marine and Freshwater Research 71(2) 213-228 https://doi.org/10.1071/MF18452
Submitted: 26 November 2018 Accepted: 2 April 2019 Published: 24 June 2019
Abstract
Overbank floods in modified lowland rivers often inundate a mosaic of different land uses (e.g. forests, crops and pastures) on the floodplain. We used a glasshouse experiment to investigate dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and nutrient (TP, NH4+, NOx) releases, chemical oxygen demand (COD) and dissolved oxygen (DO) depletion in water following inundation of soil and vegetation from a lowland river floodplain in southern Australia. Six replicate samples of six intact soil and groundcover treatments were collected during summer; three from a forest (bare soil, wallaby grass and leaf litter) and three from an adjacent paddock (bare soil, wheat and ryegrass). Samples were placed in pots, inundated with river water over 16 days, and their leachates were compared with a river-water control. All vegetated groundcover treatments had significantly higher DOC and COD and significantly less DO at both Day 1 and Day 16 than did the soil-only treatments or the control. Leachates from paddock treatments were less coloured than those from forest treatments, despite having similar concentrations of DOC. Our findings imply that the inundation of any vegetation during summer floods can be a major source of DOC and a major contributor to DO depletion.
Additional keywords: carbon characterisation, Edward–Wakool River system, floodplain catchment management, Murray–Darling Basin, nitrogen, phosphorus.
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