Moving Bedforms Control CO ₂ Production and Distribution in Sandy River Sediments

Abstract Streams and rivers play an important role in the global carbon cycle. The origins of CO 2 in streams are often poorly constrained or neglected, which is especially true for CO 2 originating from heterotrophic metabolism in streambeds. We hypothesized that sediment movement will have a direct effect on stream metabolism, and thus, the aim of this study was to quantify the effect of moving bedforms on the production of CO 2 in sandy streambeds. We conducted flume experiments where we used planar optodes to measure the distributions of O 2 and CO 2 under various streambed celerities. We combined these measurements with an assessment of bed morphodynamics and modeling to calculate O 2 consumption and CO 2 production rates. Our results indicate that sediment transport can strongly influence streambed metabolism and CO 2 production. We found that bedform celerity controls the shape of the hyporheic zone and exchange flux, and is directly linked to the spatial and temporal distributions of O 2 and CO 2 . It was also found that the most pronounced change in CO 2 production occurred when the bed changed from stationary conditions to a slowly moving bed. A more gradual increase in O 2 consumption and CO 2 production rates was observed with further increase in celerity. Our study also points out that bedform movement causes hydraulic isolation between the moving and the non‐moving fraction of the streambed that can lead to a transient storage of CO 2 in deeper sediments, which may be released in bursts during bed scour.