The Fluvial Geochemistry of the Rivers of Eastern Siberia: I. Tributaries Of
Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, Vol. 62, No. 10, pp. 1657–1676, 1998 Copyright © 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd Pergamon Printed in the USA. All rights reserved 0016-7037/98 $19.00 1 .00 PII S0016-7037(98)00107-0 The fluvial geochemistry of the rivers of Eastern Siberia: I. Tributaries of the Lena River draining the sedimentary platform of the Siberian Craton 1, 1 2 1 YOUNGSOOK HUH, *MAI-YIN TSOI, ALEXANDR ZAITSEV, and JOHN M. EDMONd 1Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA 2Laboratory of Erosion and Fluvial Processes, Department of Geography, Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia (Received June 11, 1997; accepted in revised form February 12, 1998) ABSTRACT—The response of continental weathering rates to changing climate and atmospheric PCO2 is of considerable importance both to the interpretation of the geological sedimentary record and to predictions of the effects of future anthropogenic influences. While comprehensive work on the controlling mechanisms of contemporary chemical and mechanical weathering has been carried out in the tropics and, to a lesser extent, in the strongly perturbed northern temperate latitudes, very little is known about the peri-glacial environments in the subarctic and arctic. Thus, the effects of climate, essentially temperature and runoff, on the rates of atmospheric CO2 consumption by weathering are not well quantified at this climatic extreme. To remedy this lack a comprehensive survey has been carried out of the geochemistry of the large rivers of Eastern Siberia, the Lena, Yana, Indigirka, Kolyma, Anadyr, and numerous lesser streams which drain a pristine, high-latitude region that has not experienced the pervasive effects of glaciation and subsequent anthropogenic impacts common to western Eurasia and North America.
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