Response of Annual Herbaceous Plant Leaching and Decomposition to Periodic Submergence in Mega-Reservoirs: Changes in Litter Nutrients and Soil Properties for Restoration

Litter decomposition is an important soil nutrient source that promotes vegetation in deteriorated riparian zones worldwide. The periodic submergence and sediment burial effects on two prominent annual herbaceous plants (Echinochloa crusgali and Bidens tripartite) are little known in mega-reservoir settings. Our study focuses on the mass and carbon loss and nutrient release from E. crusgali and B. tripartitle litter and changes in soil properties, which are important for riparian zone rehabilitation in the Three Gorges Dam Reservoir, China. This study adopted the litter bag method to explore the nutrient change characteristics and changes in soil properties at different sediment burial depths under flooding scenarios. Three burial depths (0 cm, 5 cm, and 10 cm) were used for these two plants, and the experiment lasted for 180 days. The results revealed that the litter decay rate was high at first in the incubation experiment, and the nutrient loss rate followed the pattern of K > P > N > C. The relationship between % C remaining and % mass remaining was nearly 1:1, and the total amount of P exhibited a leaching–enrichment–release state in the decomposition process. Nutrients were changed significantly in the soil and overlying water at the first decomposition stage. Still, the total soil nutrient change was insignificant at the end, except for the 10 cm burial of B. tripartitle. Moreover, oxidation–reduction potential was the main factor in the litter decomposition process at different burial depths. This study indicated that sediment deposition reduced litter mass loss, slowed down the release of N and P, and retained more C, but promoted the release of K. Conclusively, in litter decomposition under waterlogging, the total soil nutrient content changed little. However, litter does more to the soil than that. Therefore, it is necessary to study the residual soil litter’s continuous output after the water level declines for restoration purposes.

P-PINI: a new inversion method for sediment-burial dating

<p>For sediment-burial dating with a cosmogenic nuclide pair, the isochron burial method performs well provided that the sediment source has undergone (1) steady erosion and (2) continuous exposure to cosmic rays. These conditions exert important limitations on applications of the method. And yet, in mountainous fluvial and glacial landscapes, it is commonly found that the source area has experienced landsliding or glacial quarrying (i.e., non-steady erosion), and/or intermittent sediment storage or burial beneath glaciers (i.e., discontinuous exposure). As well as breaching the assumptions of the isochron method, such processes tend to yield low nuclide concentrations in the sample, which further limits its workability.</p><p>Here we present a more flexible method that accommodates complex, non-steady pre-burial erosion and exposure histories: conditions that exclude the isochron burial method. P-PINI (Particle Pathway Inversion of Nuclide Inventories) is a Monte Carlo-based inversion model that employs a source-to-sink approach for estimating the depositional age of fluvial and glaciogenic sediments. This method has been successfully applied to the Deckenschotter in the northern Alpine foreland (see Knudsen et al. 2020, Earth & Planetary Science Letters 549, 116491). As with the isochron burial method, P-PINI exploits an ensemble of paired nuclide (e.g., <sup>10</sup>Be-<sup>26</sup>Al) concentrations measured in different samples from the same depth in a sedimentary sequence. But unlike the isochron method, P-PINI applies a stochastic approach to simulate a wide range of possible pre-depositional exposure and erosion histories for each individual sample. These different pre-burial histories (unique to each sample) are then integrated with the constraint that all samples share a common burial history at the sink. Where cosmogenic nuclide data (or other chronometric data, e.g., OSL) are available for multiple sites, Bayesian inference modelling can impose a priori relative age constraints, or estimates on the maximum duration of sediment storage.</p><p>In this presentation, we extend P-PINI to explore how sediment storage and reworking (i.e., a range of burial depths and durations) between source and sink affects burial age estimates. Significant intermediate storage is characteristic of large river systems, such as the Danube River. Using cosmogenic <sup>10</sup>Be-<sup>26</sup>Al concentrations measured in fluvial gravels at Gänserndorf and Schlosshof, two terraces along the Danube River in the Vienna Basin (Braumann et al., 2019. Quat. Int. 509. 87-102), we examine how the burial ages at these two sites are a function of the pre-burial history experienced by the samples.  </p>