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The Italian central Apennines as a source of CO2 - EurekAlert
<p>Tectonically active mountains play an important role in the natural CO2 regulation of the atmosphere. Competing processes take place here: At Earth’s surface, erosion drives weathering processes that absorb or release CO2, depending on the type of rock. At depth, the heating and melting of carbonate rock leads to the outgassing of CO2 at the surface. In the central Italian Apennine Mountains, researchers led by Erica Erlanger and Niels Hovius from the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences and Aaron Bufe from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München have now investigated and balanced all of these processes in one region for the first time – using, among others, analyses of the CO2 content in mountain rivers and springs. They found that weathering in this region leads to an overall CO2 uptake. However, these near-surface processes only determine the CO2 balance in areas with a thick and cold crust. On the western side of the Central Apennines, the crust is thinner and the heat flow is higher. There, CO2 outgassing from depths is up to 50 times greater than CO2 uptake through weathering. All in all, the analysed landscape is a CO2 emitter. The structure and dynamics of Earth's crust, therefore, controls the release of CO2 here more strongly than chemical weathering. The study was published today in the scientific journal <em>Nature Geoscience</em>.</p>
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