Chemical weathering processes and atmospheric CO2 consumption of Huanghe River and Changjiang River basins

Abstract

Rock weathering plays an important role in studying the long-term carbon cycles and global climatic change. According to the statistics analysis, the Huanghe (Yellow) River water chemistry was mainly controlled by evaporite and carbonate weathering, which were responsible for over 90% of total dissolved ions. As compared with the Huanghe River basin, dissolved load of the Changjiang (Yangtze) River was mainly originated from the carbonate dissolution. The chemical weathering rates were estimated to be 39.29t/(km2·a) and 61.58t/(km2·a) by deducting the HCO 3 − derived from atmosphere in the Huanghe River and Changjiang River watersheds, respectively. The CO2 consumption rates by rock weathering were calculated to be 120.84×103mol/km2 and 452.46×103mol/km2annually in the two basins, respectively. The total CO2 consumption of the two basins amounted to 918.51×109mol/a, accounting for 3.83% of the world gross. In contrast to other world watersheds, the stronger evaporite reaction and infirm silicate weathering can explain such feature that CO2 consumption rates were lower than a global average, suggesting that the sequential weathering may be go on in the two Chinese drainage basins.