MOdern River archivEs of Particulate Organic Carbon: MOREPOC

Modern River Archives of Particulate Organic Carbon (MOREPOC) version 1.1 is a new, open-access, georeferenced, global database, featuring data on POC in suspended particulate matter (SPM) collected at 233 locations across 121 major river systems. This database includes 3,546 SPM data entries, among which 3,053 with POC content, 3,402 with stable carbon isotope (δ¹³C) values, 2,283 with radiocarbon activity (Δ¹⁴C) values, 1,936 with total nitrogen content, and 299 with aluminum-to-silicon mass ratios (Al/Si). The MOREPOC database aims at being used by the Earth System community to build comprehensive and quantitative models for the mobilization, alteration, and fate of terrestrial POC.

The supply of particulate organic carbon (POC) associated with terrigenous solids transported to the ocean by rivers plays a significant role in the global carbon cycle. To advance our understanding of the source, transport, and fate of fluvial POC from regional to global scales, databases of riverine POC are needed, including elemental and isotope composition data from contrasted river basins in terms of geomorphology, lithology, climate, and anthropogenic pressure. MOREPOC will benefit the scientific community carrying out research on riverine POC sources, transport, and fate, furthermore, helping inform and validate Earth system models to improve the ability to model and understand the global carbon cycle. Existing environmental raster global datasets for climate, geomorphology, lithology, tectonics, hydrology, and land use, also offer promising prospects for the use of MOREPOC for identifying the controls on POC fluxes and composition, in particular using advanced statistical analysis or machine learning techniques. Moreover, MOREPOC enables a better understanding of sources, transport, and fate of fluvial POC combined with some existing ocean sediment databases. Future updates of MOREPOC should include new bulk POC parameters as well as data on molecular fractions, thermal labile fractions, or specific components such as black carbon or fossil carbon, which should, in turn, provide additional insight into the alteration of riverine POC from source to sink, an essential feature of the global carbon cycle.

Data description

The MOREPOC database consists of two parts: 1) the master metadata (MOREPOC_v1.1); 2) the summarization of references and methods (MOREPOC_v1.1_RM). A Readme is provided to better understand all parameters provided in the MOREPOC v1.1 database. 

MOREPOC_v1.1 includes one table, avaible as Excel spreadsheet (.xslx), comma-limited table (.csv), and GIS shapefile (compiled in .rar) using WGS84 coordinate system.

• MOREPOC_v1.1.xlsx
• MOREPOC_v1.1.csv
• MOREPOC_v1.1.rar (GIS shapefile)

MOREPOC_v1.1_RM only provides one table, avaible as Excel spreadsheet (.xslx), comma-limited table (.csv).

• MOREPOC_v1.1_RM.xlsx
• MOREPOC_v1.1_RM.csv

The database structure of MOREPOC is listed in Table.1 to understand all provided parameters, more information can be found in the companion manuscript.

Contributing Data

Please contact Yutian Ke at yutianke@caltech.edu or  yutian.ke@universite-paris-saclay.fr if you are interested in contributing your published or unpublished data to MOREPOC.

Citation

Ke, Y. T., Calmels, D., Bouchez, J., Cécile, Q.: MOdern River archivEs of Particulate Organic Carbon: MOREPOC, Dataset version 1.1, Zenodo [dataset], https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7055970.