What Happened to Terrestrial Organic Matter after an Extreme Weather Event? – An Investigation into Terrestrial Carbon Export after Hurricane Harvey 2017
EMSL Project ID
50420
Abstract
The fate of soil organic matter (SOM) along the terrestrial-aquatic continuum has been a topic of intense interests for decades, due to its importance to global carbon cycle and carbon sequestration. The fate and transport of SOM after extreme weather events such as storms occur along the watershed, however, has not been studied as thoroughly, particularly in urbanized areas which also loaded with different organic contaminants. Hurricane Harvey in 2017 was the first major hurricane (Category 3-5) made landfall in the United States since in 12 years, resulted in unprecedented quantities of rain to Houston and surrounding areas for a total of six days. Such substantial amounts of precipitation had led to an enormous influx of freshwater carrying SOM and anthropogenic compounds mobilized by rainwater into the Galveston Bay, TX. Several teams of researchers from Texas A&M University (TAMU) had observed significant input of terrestrial-derived dissolved organic matter (TDOM) via Excitation-Emission matrices (EEMs) and GCMS measurement of lignin phenols. However, such observation cannot resolve the changes of DOM characterization at molecular level, and thus was not sufficient to pin-point the fate of TDOM occurred during and after Hurricane Harvey. Our team have collected DOM samples before and after (immediately after and months after) Hurricane Harvey within Galveston Bay. We propose to employ the state-of-the-art ultrahigh resolution 12 Tesla Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (12T FT-ICR-MS) at EMSL to characterize the SOM discharged into Galveston Bay, and compare how the samples differ from before Hurricane Harvey and months after the event. These samples provided us an unprecedented opportunity to understand the chemical composition of SOM mobilized during extreme weather events and consequently its fate in an estuary environment after discharge. We propose to use the pre-Harvey samples to establish a DOM characteristic baseline and compare with the expected drastic change of DOM right after Hurricane Harvey, due to the large influx of SOM. Additionally, samples collected from campaigns months after the hurricane will allow us to understand how the SOM being transform and/or transport throughout Galveston Bay, as well as to estimate how long it might take for the DOM carbon signature return to the observed baseline.
Project Details
Project type
Limited Scope
Start Date
2018-09-05
End Date
2018-11-05
Status
Closed
Released Data Link
Team
Principal Investigator
Co-Investigator(s)