The competing controls of glaciers, precipitation, and vegetation on high-mountain fluvial sediment yields

Dongfeng Li; Ting Zhang; Desmond E Walling; Stuart Lane; Bodo Bookhagen; Shang Tian; Irina Overeem; Jaia Syvitski; Albert J Kettner; Edward Park; Michèle Koppes; Rafael J P Schmitt; Weiling Sun; Jinren Ni; Todd A Ehlers

doi:10.1126/sciadv.ads6196

The competing controls of glaciers, precipitation, and vegetation on high-mountain fluvial sediment yields

Sci Adv. 2024 Nov 29;10(48):eads6196. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.ads6196. Epub 2024 Nov 27.

Authors

Dongfeng Li^{1

2

3

4}, Ting Zhang⁵, Desmond E Walling⁶, Stuart Lane⁷, Bodo Bookhagen⁸, Shang Tian^{1

2}, Irina Overeem⁹, Jaia Syvitski⁹, Albert J Kettner⁹, Edward Park¹⁰, Michèle Koppes¹¹, Rafael J P Schmitt^{12

13}, Weiling Sun^{1

2}, Jinren Ni^{1

2}, Todd A Ehlers¹⁴

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory for Water and Sediment Sciences, Ministry of Education, College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
² State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of All Materials Flux in River Ecosystems, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
³ Institute of Carbon Neutrality, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
⁴ Institute of Tibetan Plateau, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
⁵ Center for Agricultural Water Research in China, College of Water Resources and Civil Engineering, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100083, China.
⁶ Department of Geography, Faculty of Environment, Science and Economy, University of Exeter, Exeter EX4 4RJ, UK.
⁷ Institute of Earth Surface Dynamics, University of Lausanne, Lausanne CH-1015, Switzerland.
⁸ Institute of Geosciences, Universität Potsdam, Potsdam 14476, Germany.
⁹ CSDMS, Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.
¹⁰ National Institute of Education, Earth Observatory of Singapore and Asian School of the Environment, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
¹¹ Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T1Z2, Canada.
¹² Environmental Studies, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA.
¹³ The Natural Capital Project and the Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
¹⁴ School of Geographical and Earth Sciences, University of Glasgow, G12 8QQ, Scotland, UK.

Abstract

Investigating erosion and river sediment yield in high-mountain areas is crucial for understanding landscape and biogeochemical responses to environmental change. We compile data on contemporary fluvial suspended sediment yield (SSY) and 12 environmental proxies from 151 rivers in High Mountain Asia surrounding the Tibetan Plateau. We demonstrate that glaciers exert a first-order control on fluvial SSYs, with high precipitation nonlinearly amplifying their role, especially in high-glacier cover basins. We find a bidirectional response to vegetation's influence on SSY in the Eastern Tibetan Plateau and Tien Shan and identify that the two interacting factors of precipitation and vegetation cover explain 54% of the variability in SSY, reflecting the divergent roles of vegetation in promoting biogenic-weathering versus slope stabilization across bioclimatic zones. The competing interactions between glaciers, ecosystems, and climate in delivering suspended sediment have important implications for predicting carbon and nutrient exports and water quality in response to future climate change.