Soils, slopes and source rocks: Application of a soil chemistry model to nutrient delivery to rift lakes

Abstract

The topographic evolution of rift basins may be critical to the deposition of lacustrine source rocks such as the organic-rich Lower Cretaceous shales of the South Atlantic margin. Soils have been proposed as a key link between topography and source rock deposition by providing nutrients for the algae growth in rift lakes. Decreasing topographic relief from active rift to late rift has several effects on soils: soils become thicker and finer, erosion of dead surface and soil organic matter decreases, and the fractionation of precipitation between runoff and infiltration may favor increased infiltration.This hypothesis is tested by application of CENTURY, a complex box model that simulates transfer of nutrients within soil pools. The model is first applied to a rainforest soil, with several parameters individually varied. Infiltration experiments show that the concentrations of C, N and P in groundwater decrease rapidly as infiltration decreases, whether due to increased slope or to decreased precipitation. Increased erosion of surface plant litter and topsoil results in substantially decreased nutrient concentrations in groundwater. Increased sand content in soil causes an increase in nutrient concentration.We integrate these variables in analyzing topographic swathes from the Rio Grande Rift, comparing the southern part of the rift, where topography is relatively old and reduced, to the northern rift. C and P concentrations in groundwater increase as slope gradient decreases, resulting in substantially larger C and P concentrations in groundwater in the southern rift than the northern rift. Nitrogen concentrations in groundwater depends on whether infiltration varies as a function of slope gradient; in experiments where the fraction of infiltrated precipitation decreased with increasing slope, N concentrations was also substantially higher in the southern rift; but in experiments where that fraction was held constant, N concentrations was lower in the southern rift. These simulations demonstrate that evolving topography during rift development can significantly influence nutrient concentrations in groundwater and, if these nutrients flow into rift lakes and stimulate organic productivity, account for the deposition of rich oil-prone source rocks in late rift stages.