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Earthquakes act as a capacitor for terrestrial organic carbon

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Abstract

Earthquakes and seismically-induced landslides accelerate carbon export from mountains by eroding hillslope soil carbon. However, a quantitative understanding of their net contribution to carbon cycling remains incomplete. Using the 2008 Mw 7.9 Wenchuan Earthquake which generated the largest landslide volume in recent history, we quantify its carbon mass balance accounting for storage, loss, and transport within the ensuing sediment cascade. Thanks to post-event revegetation and extensive intermontane sediment storage, we show that the earthquake boosted Longmenshan carbon mass by ~10%. Given the stability of these deposits and low rates of carbon export, we anticipate this landslide carbon will persist for centuries to millennia before gradually declining. In effect, we demonstrate that earthquakes and landslides function as capacitors, regulating carbon storage and discharge across mountain belts over time. This suggests frequent landslides in seismically-active mountains may lead to a net carbon sequestration, providing a critical and direct link between tectonics and the carbon cycle.

Data availability

The data generated or analysed during this study are included in the paper, Supplementary Information and the Source Data 1. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

The codes to produce the carbon balance model are available at https://github.com/liujie1408/carbon-dynamics-model

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Prof. Zhangdong Jin for his constructive comments and valuable suggestions, which helped to improve this manuscript. We also thank Liyang Jiang, Shikang Liu, Yinshuang Yang and Tao Wei for their invaluable assistance with field sampling and laboratory experiments, Chengyong Fang for support with model computations, and Hao Zhong for helpful discussions on the mathematical treatment of uncertainty in landslide volume and sediment budget calculations. We further thank the reviewers for their constructive comments, which greatly improved the quality of this manuscript. This research was supported by the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars of China (Grant No. 42125702; X.F.), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 42507288; J.L.), the National Science Fund for International Cooperation and Exchange of China (Grant No. W2412050; X.F.), Key Program of Tianfu Yongxing Laboratory (Grant 2023KJGG06; X.T.), and the 111 Project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Geohazard Prevention and Geoenvironment Protection, Chengdu University of Technology, Chengdu, China

    Jie Liu, Xuanmei Fan, Xiaolu Tang & Qiang Xu

  2. School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Cardiff University, Main Building, Park Place, Cardiff, UK

    Jie Liu & Tristram Hales

  3. Department of Geography, Durham University, Durham, UK

    Erin L. Harvey

  4. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    A. Joshua West

  5. GFÚ Institute of Geophysics, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czechia

    John D. Jansen

  6. College of Ecology and Environment, Chengdu University of Technology, Chengdu, China

    Xiaolu Tang

  7. Tianfu Yongxing Laboratory, Chengdu, China

    Xiaolu Tang

Authors

  1. Jie Liu
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  2. Xuanmei Fan
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  3. Tristram Hales
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  4. Erin L. Harvey
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Contributions

Conceptualization: X.F., T.C., J.L. Methodology: J.L., X.T. Investigation: J.L., E.L.H. Visualization: J.L. Supervision: T.C., X.F., X.T., A.J.W., Q.X. Writing—original draft: J.L., T.C. Writing—review & editing: X.F., A.J.W., J.D.J.

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Correspondence to
Xuanmei Fan.

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Nature Communications thanks Chris Massey and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. A peer review file is available.

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Liu, J., Fan, X., Hales, T. et al. Earthquakes act as a capacitor for terrestrial organic carbon.
Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-68341-3

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