Lithology describes the geochemical, mineralogical, and physical properties of rocks. It plays a key role in many processes at the Earth surface, especially the fluxes of matter to soils, ecosystems, ...rivers, and oceans. Understanding these processes at the global scale requires a high resolution description of lithology. A new high resolution global lithological map (GLiM) was assembled from existing regional geological maps translated into lithological information with the help of regional literature. The GLiM represents the rock types of the Earth surface with 1,235,400 polygons. The lithological classification consists of three levels. The first level contains 16 lithological classes comparable to previously applied definitions in global lithological maps. The additional two levels contain 12 and 14 subclasses, respectively, which describe more specific rock attributes. According to the GLiM, the Earth is covered by 64% sediments (a third of which are carbonates), 13% metamorphics, 7% plutonics, and 6% volcanics, and 10% are covered by water or ice. The high resolution of the GLiM allows observation of regional lithological distributions which often vary from the global average. The GLiM enables regional analysis of Earth surface processes at global scales. A gridded version of the GLiM is available at the PANGEA Database (http://dx.doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.788537).
Key Points
Global lithological map of high resolution
Three levels of lithological information are provided
A gridded version of the map is available
The chemical weathering of rocks currently absorbs about 1.1 Gt CO2 a−1 being mainly stored as bicarbonate in the ocean. An enhancement of this slow natural process could remove substantial amounts ...of CO2 from the atmosphere, aiming to offset some unavoidable anthropogenic emissions in order to comply with the Paris Agreement, while at the same time it may decrease ocean acidification. We provide the first comprehensive assessment of economic costs, energy requirements, technical parameterization, and global and regional carbon removal potential. The crucial parameters defining this potential are the grain size and weathering rates. The main uncertainties about the potential relate to weathering rates and rock mass that can be integrated into the soil. The discussed results do not specifically address the enhancement of weathering through microbial processes, feedback of geogenic nutrient release, and bioturbation. We do not only assess dunite rock, predominantly bearing olivine (in the form of forsterite) as the mineral that has been previously proposed to be best suited for carbon removal, but focus also on basaltic rock to minimize potential negative side effects. Our results show that enhanced weathering is an option for carbon dioxide removal that could be competitive already at 60 US $ t−1 CO2 removed for dunite, but only at 200 US $ t−1 CO2 removed for basalt. The potential carbon removal on cropland areas could be as large as 95 Gt CO2 a−1 for dunite and 4.9 Gt CO2 a−1 for basalt. The best suited locations are warm and humid areas, particularly in India, Brazil, South-East Asia and China, where almost 75% of the global potential can be realized. This work presents a techno-economic assessment framework, which also allows for the incorporation of further processes.
Terrestrial enhanced weathering, the spreading of ultramafic silicate rock flour to enhance natural weathering rates, has been suggested as part of a strategy to reduce global atmospheric CO2 levels. ...We budget potential CO2 sequestration against associated CO2 emissions to assess the net CO2 removal of terrestrial enhanced weathering. We combine global spatial data sets of potential source rocks, transport networks, and application areas with associated CO2 emissions in optimistic and pessimistic scenarios. The results show that the choice of source rocks and material comminution technique dominate the CO2 efficiency of enhanced weathering. CO2 emissions from transport amount to on average 0.5–3% of potentially sequestered CO2. The emissions of material mining and application are negligible. After accounting for all emissions, 0.5–1.0 t CO2 can be sequestered on average per tonne of rock, translating into a unit cost from 1.6 to 9.9 GJ per tonne CO2 sequestered by enhanced weathering. However, to control or reduce atmospheric CO2 concentrations substantially with enhanced weathering would require very large amounts of rock. Before enhanced weathering could be applied on large scales, more research is needed to assess weathering rates, potential side effects, social acceptability, and mechanisms of governance.
The spatial distribution of subsurface parameters such as permeability are increasingly relevant for regional to global climate, land surface, and hydrologic models that are integrating groundwater ...dynamics and interactions. Despite the large fraction of unconsolidated sediments on Earth's surface with a wide range of permeability values, current global, high‐resolution permeability maps distinguish solely fine‐grained and coarse‐grained unconsolidated sediments. Representative permeability values are derived for a wide variety of unconsolidated sediments and applied to a new global map of unconsolidated sediments to produce the first geologically constrained, two‐layer global map of shallower and deeper permeability. The new mean logarithmic permeability of the Earth's surface is −12.7 ± 1.7 m2 being 1 order of magnitude higher than that derived from previous maps, which is consistent with the dominance of the coarser sediments. The new data set will benefit a variety of scientific applications including the next generation of climate, land surface, and hydrology models at regional to global scales.
Key Points
Mean global permeability is higher with detailed unconsolidated mapping
Representative permeability values are applied to a new global map to produce first geologically constrained, two‐layer global map of shallower and deeper permeability
Maps are crucial for next generation of land surface, hydrologic, and climate models
Because there remains a lack of knowledge about the spatially explicit distribution of chemical weathering rates at the global scale, a model that considers prominent first-order factors is compiled ...step by step and the implied spatial variability in weathering is explored. The goal is to fuel the discussion about the development of an “Earth System” weathering function. We use as a starting point an established model of the dependence of chemical weathering on lithology and runoff, calibrated for an island arc setting, which features very high chemical weathering rates and a strong dependence on lithology and runoff. The model is enhanced stepwise with further factors accounting for soil shielding and temperature, and the observed variation of fluxes is discussed in context of observed data from large rivers globally.
Results suggest that the global soil shielding reduces chemical weathering (CW) fluxes by about 44%, compared to an Earth surface with no deeply weathered soils but relatively young rock surfaces (e.g. as in volcanic arc and other tectonically active areas). About 70% of the weathering fluxes globally derive from 10% of the land area, with Southeast Asia being a primary “hot spot” of chemical weathering. In contrast, only 50% of runoff is attributed to 10% of the land area; thus the global chemical weathering curve is to some extent disconnected from the global runoff curve due to the spatially heterogeneous climate as well as rock and soil properties. The analysis of carbonate dissolution reveals that about half of the flux is not delivered from labeled carbonate sedimentary rocks, but from trace carbonates in igneous rocks as well as from siliciclastic sediment areas containing matrix carbonate.
In addition to total chemical weathering fluxes, the release of P, a nutrient that controls biological productivity at large spatial scales, is affected by the spatial correlation between runoff, lithology, temperature and soil properties. The areal abundance of deeply weathered soils in Earth's past may have influenced weathering fluxes and P-fuelled biological productivity significantly, specifically in the case of larger climate shifts when high runoff fields shift to areas with thinner soils or areas with more weatherable rocks and relatively increased P-content. This observation may be particularly important for spatially resolved Earth system models targeting geological time scales. The model is discussed against current process knowledge and geodata with focus on improving future global chemical weathering model attempts.
Identified key processes and geodata demanding further research are a) the representation of flowpaths to distinguish surface runoff, interflow and baseflow contributions to CW-fluxes, b) freeze-thaw effects on chemical weathering, specifically for the northern latitudes, c) a more detailed analysis to identify to what extent the spatially heterogeneous distribution of Earth surface properties causes a decoupling of the Earth system rating functions between CW-fluxes and global runoff, as well as d) an improved understanding of where and to what extent trace or matrix carbonates in silicate-dominated rocks and sediments contribute to carbonate weathering. The latter demands e) an improved representation of carbonate content in lithological classes in the lithological representation of the Earth surface. Further improvement of the lithological database is needed for f) the age of rocks and g) the geochemistry of sediments with focus on unconsolidated sediments in the large basins. And clearly h) an improved global soil database is needed for future improvements with reliable soil depth, mineralogical composition as well as physical properties.
•Most of the weathering fluxes globally derive from only a very small land area.•Global soil shielding reduces chemical weathering largely if compared to island arc settings.•Relevant hotspots of chemical weathering are not captured in recent Earth system models.•Arctic weathering processes bias current model strategies causing a significant bias.•Small area P-release by chemical weathering substantially contributes to the global budget.
CO2 evasion from rivers (FCO2) is an important component of the global carbon budget. Here we present the first global maps of CO2 partial pressures (pCO2) in rivers of stream orders 3 and higher and ...the resulting FCO2 at 0.5° resolution constructed with a statistical model. A geographic information system based approach is used to derive a pCO2 prediction function trained on data from 1182 sampling locations. While data from Asia and Africa are scarce and the training data set is dominated by sampling locations from the Americas, Europe, and Australia, the sampling locations cover the full spectrum from high to low latitudes. The predictors of pCO2 are net primary production, population density, and slope gradient within the river catchment as well as mean air temperature at the sampling location (r2 = 0.47). The predicted pCO2 map was then combined with spatially explicit estimates of stream surface area Ariver and gas exchange velocity k calculated from published empirical equations and data sets to derive the FCO2 map. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we assessed the uncertainties of our estimates. At the global scale, we estimate an average river pCO2 of 2400 (2019–2826) µatm and a FCO2 of 650 (483–846) Tg C yr−1 (5th and 95th percentiles of confidence interval). Our global CO2 evasion is substantially lower than the recent estimate of 1800 Tg C yr−1 although the training set of pCO2 is very similar in both studies, mainly due to lower tropical pCO2 estimates in the present study. Our maps reveal strong latitudinal gradients in pCO2, Ariver, and FCO2. The zone between 10°N and 10°S contributes about half of the global CO2 evasion. Collection of pCO2 data in this zone, in particular, for African and Southeast Asian rivers is a high priority to reduce uncertainty on FCO2.
Key Points
First global maps of river CO2 partial pressures and evasion at 0.5° resolution
Global river CO2 evasion estimated at 650 (483–846) Tg C yr−1
Latitudes between 10°N and 10°S contribute half of the global CO2 evasion
We assess the literature on innovation and upscaling for negative emissions technologies (NETs) using a systematic and reproducible literature coding procedure. To structure our review, we employ the ...framework of sequential stages in the innovation process, with which we code each NETs article in innovation space. We find that while there is a growing body of innovation literature on NETs, 59% of the articles are focused on the earliest stages of the innovation process, 'research and development' (R&D). The subsequent stages of innovation are also represented in the literature, but at much lower levels of activity than R&D. Distinguishing between innovation stages that are related to the supply of the technology (R&D, demonstrations, scale up) and demand for the technology (demand pull, niche markets, public acceptance), we find an overwhelming emphasis (83%) on the supply side. BECCS articles have an above average share of demand-side articles while direct air carbon capture and storage has a very low share. Innovation in NETs has much to learn from successfully diffused technologies; appealing to heterogeneous users, managing policy risk, as well as understanding and addressing public concerns are all crucial yet not well represented in the extant literature. Results from integrated assessment models show that while NETs play a key role in the second half of the 21st century for 1.5 °C and 2 °C scenarios, the major period of new NETs deployment is between 2030 and 2050. Given that the broader innovation literature consistently finds long time periods involved in scaling up and deploying novel technologies, there is an urgency to developing NETs that is largely unappreciated. This challenge is exacerbated by the thousands to millions of actors that potentially need to adopt these technologies for them to achieve planetary scale. This urgency is reflected neither in the Paris Agreement nor in most of the literature we review here. If NETs are to be deployed at the levels required to meet 1.5 °C and 2 °C targets, then important post-R&D issues will need to be addressed in the literature, including incentives for early deployment, niche markets, scale-up, demand, and-particularly if deployment is to be hastened-public acceptance.
The lack of robust, spatially distributed subsurface data is the key obstacle limiting the implementation of complex and realistic groundwater dynamics into global land surface, hydrologic, and ...climate models. We map and analyze permeability and porosity globally and at high resolution for the first time. The new permeability and porosity maps are based on a recently completed high‐resolution global lithology map that differentiates fine and coarse‐grained sediments and sedimentary rocks, which is important since these have different permeabilities. The average polygon size in the new map is ~100 km2, which is a more than hundredfold increase in resolution compared to the previous map which has an average polygon size of ~14,000 km2. We also significantly improve the representation in regions of weathered tropical soils and permafrost. The spatially distributed mean global permeability ~10−15 m2 with permafrost or ~10−14 m2 without permafrost. The spatially distributed mean porosity of the globe is 14%. The maps will enable further integration of groundwater dynamics into land surface, hydrologic, and climate models.
Key Points
Mean global permeability is consistent with previous estimates of shallow crust
The spatially‐distributed mean porosity of the globe is 14%
Maps will enable groundwater in land surface, hydrologic and climate models
The most recent IPCC assessment has shown an important role for negative emissions technologies (NETs) in limiting global warming to 2 °C cost-effectively. However, a bottom-up, systematic, ...reproducible, and transparent literature assessment of the different options to remove CO2 from the atmosphere is currently missing. In part 1 of this three-part review on NETs, we assemble a comprehensive set of the relevant literature so far published, focusing on seven technologies: bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), afforestation and reforestation, direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS), enhanced weathering, ocean fertilisation, biochar, and soil carbon sequestration. In this part, part 2 of the review, we present estimates of costs, potentials, and side-effects for these technologies, and qualify them with the authors' assessment. Part 3 reviews the innovation and scaling challenges that must be addressed to realise NETs deployment as a viable climate mitigation strategy. Based on a systematic review of the literature, our best estimates for sustainable global NET potentials in 2050 are 0.5-3.6 GtCO2 yr−1 for afforestation and reforestation, 0.5-5 GtCO2 yr−1 for BECCS, 0.5-2 GtCO2 yr−1 for biochar, 2-4 GtCO2 yr−1 for enhanced weathering, 0.5-5 GtCO2 yr−1 for DACCS, and up to 5 GtCO2 yr−1 for soil carbon sequestration. Costs vary widely across the technologies, as do their permanency and cumulative potentials beyond 2050. It is unlikely that a single NET will be able to sustainably meet the rates of carbon uptake described in integrated assessment pathways consistent with 1.5 °C of global warming.
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