Abstract
UV–visible spectroscopy has been shown to be a useful technique for determining dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentrations. However, at present we are unaware of any studies in the literature that have investigated the suitability of this approach for tropical DOC water samples from any tropical peatlands, although some work has been performed in other tropical environments. We used water samples from two oil palm estates in Sarawak, Malaysia to: i) investigate the suitability of both single and two-wavelength proxies for tropical DOC determination; ii) develop a calibration dataset and set of parameters to calculate DOC concentrations indirectly; iii) provide tropical researchers with guidance on the best spectrophotometric approaches to use in future analyses of DOC. Both single and two-wavelength model approaches performed well with no one model significantly outperforming the other. The predictive ability of the models suggests that UV–visible spectroscopy is both a viable and low cost method for rapidly analyzing DOC in water samples immediately post-collection, which can be important when working at remote field sites with access to only basic laboratory facilities.
Highlights
Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) is derived from the solubilisation of organic matter, and can be leached from the terrestrial landscape into freshwater ecosystems (Thurman, 1985)
Interest in DOC losses from tropical peatlands has increased in recent years, fuelled in part by the realization of how vulnerable this carbon loss pathway is to land-use related disturbance (Moore et al, 2011, 2013; Evans et al, 2014; Rixen et al, 2016)
At present we are unaware of any studies in the literature that have investigated the suitability of UVevis spectroscopy methods for measuring DOC concentrations in water samples from tropical peatland catchments and, from oil palm plantations
Summary
Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) is derived from the solubilisation of organic matter, and can be leached from the terrestrial landscape into freshwater ecosystems (Thurman, 1985). It plays a crucial role in peatland carbon budgets (Cole et al, 2007; Hulatt et al, 2014; Abrams et al, 2015; Muller et al, 2015) because it represents a carbon loss from the peat itself and, once in the aquatic system can be degraded, both biologically and photo-chemically, liberating CO2 (carbon dioxide), CH4 (methane) and CO (carbon monoxide) into the atmosphere (Cole et al, 2007; Clark et al, 2010; Fellman et al, 2014).
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