High sensitivity of dissolved organic carbon transport during hydrological events in a small subtropical karst catchment.

Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and discharge are often tightly coupled, though these relationships in karst environments remain poorly constrained. In this study, DOC dynamics over 13 hydrological events, alongside monthly monitoring over an entire hydrological year were monitored in a small karst catchment, SW China. The concurrent analyses of power-law model and hysteresis patterns reveal that DOC behavior is generally transport-limited due to flushing effects of increased discharge but highly variable at both intra- and inter-event scales. The initial discharge at event onset and discharge-weighted mean concentration of DOC ([DOC] _DW ) of individual events can explain 37.7 % and 19.9 % of the variance of DOC behavior among events, respectively. The sustained dry-cold antecedent conditions make DOC hysteresis behavior during the earliest event complex and different from subsequent events. At event scale, the variability in DOC export is primarily controlled by [DOC] _DW (explaining 64.3 %) and the yield of total dissolved solutes (Y _TDS , explaining 30.4 %), reflecting the impacts of variable hydrological connectivity and intense soil-water-rock interactions in this karst catchment. On an annual scale, DOC yield (Y _DOC , 222.86 kg C km ^-2 ) was mostly derived during the wet season (98.19 %) under the hydrological driving force. The difference in annual Y _DOC between this karst catchment and other regions can be well explained by annual water yield (Y _water , explaining 24.2 %) and [DOC] (explaining 35.4 %), whereas the variance in DOC export efficiency among catchments is almost exclusively controlled by [DOC] alone, independent of drainage area and annual Y _water . This study highlights the necessity of high-frequency sampling for modeling carbon biogeochemical processes and the particularity of the earliest hydrological events occurred after a long cold-dry period in karst catchments. Under the changing climate, whether DOC dynamics in karst catchments will present source-limited patterns during more extreme hydrological events merits further study.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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