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How to Establish and Use World Budgets of Riverine Materials

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Physical and Chemical Weathering in Geochemical Cycles

Part of the book series: NATO ASI Series ((ASIC,volume 251))

Abstract

Average river water composition is often taken as a reference of surface water chemistry (Stumm and Morgan, 1981), and global river inputs have been used to set up the elemental mass balance of oceans (Burton and Liss, 1973; Berner and Raiswell, 1983; Martin, Burton and Eisma, 1981; Wollast and Mackenzie, 1983). The sodium budget has been used to estimate the age of the ocean (Clarke, 1924; Conway, 1942; Livingstone, 1963b). The rivers are a major pathway in the global geochemical cycles of elements, and they are probably one of the better known parts of the external cycle, since extensive work has been done on the composition and origins of river loads (Garrels and Mackenzie, 1971; Berner, 1971; Holland, 1978; Ivanov, 1981; Kempe, 1979). A recent trend in geochemistry is the modelling of past cycles based on today’s data, an approach that is also of great interest in geology and sedimentology (Berner, Lasaga and Garrels, 1983; Garrels and Lerman, 1984). However, this extrapolation can only be achieved through careful consideration of present river loads which are now very much affected by human activity. The coupling between elemental cycles, as discussed in SCOPE publications (Likens, 1981), makes clear the role of the atmosphere and biosphere in the global cycles and, hence, in the river fluxes. Finally, the river loads have long been considered as the essential information basis for land erosion rates (Meade, 1969, and this volume)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut de Biogéochimie Marine, Ecole Normale Supérieure, 92120, Montrouge, France

    Michel Meybeck

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  1. Michel Meybeck
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  1. Department of Geological Sciences, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, USA

    A. Lerman

  2. Institut de Biogéochimie Marine, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Montrouge, France

    M. Meybeck

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© 1988 Kluwer Academic Publishers

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Meybeck, M. (1988). How to Establish and Use World Budgets of Riverine Materials. In: Lerman, A., Meybeck, M. (eds) Physical and Chemical Weathering in Geochemical Cycles. NATO ASI Series, vol 251. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3071-1_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3071-1_12

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