Welcome Hao-Wei Huang to the Surf@LMU team! Hao-Wei finished his master’s degree at the Cheng Kung University, Taiwan and will study sediment transport and weathering in the floodplains of the Beni and Madeira Rivers.
New to the team: Hao-Wei Huang
New paper: Climate warming and weathering
Sen Xu analyzed the changes in weathering fluxes from the headwaters of the Yangtze River over a period of seven years. During this time, climate warmed substantially, and Sen’s data show a substantial increases in solute fluxes from evaporite weathering (especially in the permafrost-rich headwaters of the JSR river). These changes could enhance secondary carbonate precipitation and lead to CO2 release. In addition, sulfide weathering becomes relatively more important than silicate and carbonate weathering reactions. This finding implies that warming and hydrological changes lead to a shift toward less CO2 drawdown and more CO2 release from rock weathering.
About: Xu, S., Bufe, A., Kemeny, P.C., Klaus, M., Zhong, J., Ma, T., Li, D., Li S.L., (2025). Climate warming and strengthened hydrologic cycle accelerate CO2 release from rock weathering. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, 407, 174-192. Journal Link
New paper: CO2 outgassing from floodplains
A new paper on the fluxes and sources of CO2 outgassing from different floodplain deposits is out now. Sophia measured CO2 that is emitted from river channels, riverbank sediments and older floodplain deposits along the Rio Bermejo in Argentina. She found the highest fluxes occur away from the modern channel and riverbanks. Here, emissions are highly seasonal (highest fluxes during the wet season) and are influenced by the respiration of recent and old organic matter.
Based on her measurements, Sophie estimated that sediments and soils in the Rio Bermejo floodplains emit almost 450 tons of carbon per square kilometer and per year.
About: Dosch, S., Hovius, N., Bufe, A., Repasch, M., Scheingross, J., Vieth-Hillebrand, A., Sachse, D. (2025). CO2 Fluxes Driven by Floodplain Morphology and Seasonality at the Rio Bermejo, Argentina. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, 130(8), e2024JG008517. Journal Link
New Position: Doctoral student in Earth Surface Geochemistry
I am looking to fill one PhD position at the University of Munich (LMU) to study sediment transport and weathering across the Madeira floodplain within the ERC-funded project Floodplain Weathering (FloW). The full announcement can be found here. The application deadline is Friday April 25, and I hope to fill the position between July and September this year.
New paper: Evolution of channel belts
About: Turowski et al., (2025), Earth Surface Dynamics (link)
Chapter four of our work on how channel belts and valleys set their widths is out now. We use a random walk model to make predictions on how channel belts widen. The model is consistent with observations from both experiments and the field, and it is governed by three timescales.
On short timescales, the river moves in just one direction. Then, the channel belt widens linearly at a rate that depends on the rivers “lateral transport capacity”. We introduced the concept of this lateral transport capacity here. On medium timescales, the river moves back and forth across the channel belt. Then, the evolution of channel-belt width can be modelled with an exponential approach to an asymptote. On long timescales the river erodes the margins of the active channel belt only occasionally. The channel belt widens as the squareroot of time.
The model makes predictions on the age of floodplain surfaces, and it fits rare data on floodplain ages well.
Visiting PhD student: Ao Liu
Welcome Ao Liu to the Surf@LMU team! Ao is visiting from the China University of Geosciences in Wuhan, and she is funded by a CSC-scholarship. She will study weathering fluxes from shales in Southern China.
ERC Starting Grant
I am thrilled to announce that I received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) to study weathering of sediments on floodplains. With this project, I hope to better understand how sediment transport from mountains across lowlands impacts Earth’s carbon cycle. Two PhD positions will likely be advertised throughout next year. Stay tuned for more updates.
New Postdoc & Funding: Albert Cabré
Welcome Albert Cabré to the team @LMU! Albert won a DAAD-Prime fellowship to study debris flows in the Atacama desert in collaboration with Andreas Lang (University of Salzburg). Learn more about Albert and his work on his website and google scholar.
New Paper: Inorganic CO2 budget of the central Apennines
About: Erlanger et al., (2024), Nature Geosciences (link)
In our new paper, we use stream water chemistry in two river catchments of the central Apennines to infer the CO2 fluxes from surficial weathering reactions as well as the CO2 degassing from depths.
In the east, where the crust is thick and cold, carbon fluxes from silicate weathering dominate the carbon budget. In contrast, the western catchment is underlain by thin and hot crust. Here, carbon fluxes are dominated by CO2 degassing from the crust and mantle, and these fluxes are up to 50-times higher than the carbon drawdown from silicate weathering.
You can check out a more detailed press-release by the GFZ here.
New Paper: Warming impacts carbon fluxes from permafrost river
About: Xu et al., (2024), Environmental Science & Technology (link)
In a new paper spearheaded by Sen Xu from Tianjin University, we investiagate the role of warming for the export of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) in two major rivers that drain the eastern Qinghai−Tibetan Plateau.
In the Jinsha River that has 51% of its catchment underlain by continuous permafrost, DIC fluxes increase substantially over the past 40 years. Changes in river discharge play a negligible role for that increase in flux. Instead, the increase in DIC fluxes correlates most strongly with the temperature increase.
The Yalong river that is situated at lower elevation and has only 14% permafrost cover does not show a substantial increase in DIC fluxes. This observation suggest that the presence or absence of permafrost may strongly modulate the sensitivity of inorganic carbon fluxes to global warming.