Weak impact of landscape parameters and rock lithology on Mg isotope composition of the Yenisey River and its tributaries

Abstract

Constraining the mechanisms controlling the riverine flux of major cations and their isotopes including that of Mg to the World Ocean is one of the challenges in Earth surface isotope geochemistry. In an attempt to identify the main factors affecting the Mg isotopic composition of large rivers including vegetation, climate and lithology of the watershed, we studied the largest, in terms of discharge, Siberian river, Yenisey, and 20 of its main tributaries, during spring flood, summer flow and winter. The working hypothesis was that the influence of bedrock composition is most pronounced in winter, when the soils are frozen and the rivers are fed by deep underground waters. Thus, we anticipated that the presence of permafrost will help to distinguish the impact of surface processes, linked to biological uptake and release, and deep soil/underground transport of Mg from mineral sources. In contrast to these expectations, no sizable differences in the Mg isotope composition of the river water (±0.1‰) for both the Yenisey tributaries and its main channel has been observed between the spring flood (May) and the winter (March) period. Those two periods are characterized by the differences of discharge and degree of lithological impact on element source in the river water. Regardless of the season, there was no straightforward control of lithology (relative abundance of carbonates, basalts, granites and sedimentary rocks) on δ26Mg in the main tributaries of the Yenisey river. Our findings suggest that the use of riverine Mg isotope signature for tracing weathering mechanisms and dominant lithological impact is not straightforward at the scale of large rivers whose watersheds present multiple lithologies, variable climatic conditions and vegetation types.