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Carbon and nutrients sources and transformation in the River Sabaki, Kenya

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CARBON AND NUTRIENTS SOURCES AND TRANSFORMATION IN RIVER SABAKI, KENYA

 Rivers play an important role in the global carbon cycle, and process ~2.7 Pg C yr-1 (Aufdenkampe et al., 2011; Fig. 1 A)

 Freshwater systems function as biogeochemical “hot spots”

 Similarly, eutrophication of riverine systems is a global environmental problem and its severity continues to increase in the recent years (Xu et al., 2016).

 In this study, we report the sources of carbon and nitrate and their transformation along the longitudinal gradient of River Sabaki (Kenya).

Introduction

Tamooh, Fredrick1, Cherono Shawlet1,2, Alberto. V. Borges3, Steven Bouillon4

1Kenyatta University, Department of Zoological Sciences, P.O Box 16778-80100, Mombasa, Kenya 2Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute, PO Box 81651, Mombasa-80100, Kenya

3Université de Liège, Unité d’Océanographie Chimique, Institut de Physique (B5), B-4000, Belgium

4Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Dept. of Earth & Environmental Sciences, Celestijnenlaan 200E, 3001 Leuven, Belgium

Study area and Methods

 Sabaki River is the second-largest river network in Kenya with a total catchment area of 46 600 km2.

 Its headwaters are located in

Aberdare range in central Kenya and Kilimanjaro in Tanzania (Fig 2

A)

 The upper catchment is dominated

by agricultural areas while

industrial activities and informal

settlements dominate the

sub-catchment around Nairobi city (Fig

2 B) .

 The basin is characterized by

bimodal hydrological cycle of two dry seasons interspersed by a long (March–May) and short (October– December) rain seasons (Fig 2 C)

Longitudinal changes of total suspended matter and

particulate organic carbon

Results & Discussion

Acknowledgements

Funding for this work was provided by the International Atomic Energy Agency. We are grateful to Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences and Université de Liège, Unité d’Océanographie Chimique, Institut de Physique, Belgium for handling isotopic and nutrients analyses and WIOMSA for the travel grant to the symposium.

 A consistent downstream increase in TSM and POC was

observed (p<0.01; Fig. 4).

 This indicate that most particulate matter exported towards the coastal zone originated from the mid and low altitude zones.

 This phenomenon is attributed to sediment resuspension in lower stream rather than from upper catchment.

 The downstream increase in

δ13C-POC values (p<0.01, Fig 5) could be explained by a combination of two processes: (i) altitudinal differences in the

δ13C signature of C3

vegetation, and/or (ii) a shift towards a higher contribution of C4 vegetation at lower altitudes as observed in Tana River, Kenya (Tamooh et al., 2012).

Diurnal biogeochemical processes

Figure4: Altitudinal profile of (A) TSM (B) POC

Figure 5: Altitudinal profile of δ13C-POC

Figure 6: Altitudinal profile of (A) NO−

3 and (B) NH+4 along the Sabaki River

during the dry season sampling

In situ measurements

Generally, temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen and specific

conductivity increased consistently downstream (Pearson

correlation: r2 =0.94, 0.96, 0.89 and 0.77 for temperature, pH, dissolved

oxygen and specific conductivity, respectively; p < 0.05; n = 15; Fig. 3).

The low pH and low O2 level in upper reaches is associated with disposal of untreated wastewater.

Figure 3: Altitudinal profiles of (A) temperature (B) pH (C) dissolved oxygen and (D) specific conductivity along the Sabaki River during the dry season sampling

The in situ field measurements of pH, temperature, specific conductivity and % saturation of dissolved oxygen increased steadily during daytime (indicative of CO2 consumption by photosynthesis) and decreased

at night (indicative of CO2 release by

respiration) (Tamooh et al., 2013).

Figure 7: Diurnal fluctuations of (A) temperature and %

saturation of dissolved oxygen, (B) pH and specific conductivity and (C) NO3 and NH4 at lower stream of Sabaki River.

The rapid decrease of NH+

4 in upper reach is accompanied by an increase of NO−3 over the same stretch (Fig. 6 A & B).

Longer water residence time increases biological nutrient cycling (e.g. nitrification, denitrification and primary production) (McGuire and McDonnell, 2007, Marwick et al., 2014).

Nutrients dynamics along river flow path

Correspondence to: Fredrick Tamooh (tamooh.fredrick@ku.ac.ke or fltamooh@yahoo.com)

Figure 2: (A) Digital elevation model (DEM) of the Sabaki River

catchment (B) vegetation biomes , (C) discharge (D) algal growth in lower reaches

Figure 1: (A) Carbon flow path from land through rivers, lakes, reservoirs, and

wetlands to the ocean (B) global riverine carbon transport (C) the main sources of organic carbon

~ 0.2 Pg C

~ 0.2 Pg C ~ 0.5 Pg C

Schlunz & Schneider, 2000

A B C

A

D B

C

 Sabaki River experiences serious cyanobacterial blooms annually due to excessive nitrate inputs associated with industrial and domestic sewage discharge (Fig 2 D)

 Samples for organic carbon pools and nutrients were collected throughout the longitudinal gradient of River Sabaki at equidistant of ~40km during the dry season (August-September 2016) and analyzed using the standard techniques.

1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0 28 26 24 22 20 Altitude (m) T e m p ( °C ) 1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0 10.5 10.0 9.5 9.0 8.5 8.0 7.5 7.0 Altitude (m) p H 1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0 140 130 120 110 100 90 80 70 60 50 Altitude (m) O x yg e n S a tu ra ti o n (% ) 1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0 500 450 400 350 Altitude (m) C o n d u c ti v it y ( µ S /c m ) A B C D 1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0 160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 Altitude (m) T S M ( m g /L ) 1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0 40 30 20 10 0 Altitude (m) P O C ( m g /L ) A B 1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0 -12 -14 -16 -18 -20 -22 -24 -26 Altitude (m) δ 1 3 C -P O C 1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0 800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 Altitude (m) N O 3 -N ( µ m ) 1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 Altitude (m) N H 4 -N ( µ m ) A B A C B

References

Aufdenkampe, et al.,2011, Front. Ecol. Environ., 9, 53–60.

Marwick, et al., 2014, Biogeosciences, 11, 443– 460, 2014, doi:10.5194/bg-11-443-2014

McGuire, K. and McDonnell, J, Blackwell

Publishers, Boston, Massachusetts, 334–374, 2007 Tamooh, et al 2013, Biogeosciences, 10, 6911–

6928, 2013doi:10.5194/bg-10-6911-2013.

Tamooh, et al 2012 Biogeosciences, 9: 2905-2920, 2012,doi:10.5194/bg-9-2905-2012.

Schlünz, B., and Schneider, R. R., Int. J. Environ. Sci., 88, 599–606, 2000.

Xu et al., 2016, Environ Sci Pollut Res 23:1133– 1148

TENTH

WIOMSA SCIEN

TIFIC

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