%0 Journal Article %A Anderson, J %A Heathcote, A %A Engstrom, D %A Ryves, D %A Mills, K %A Prairie, Y %A del Giorgio, P %A Bennion, H %A Turner, S %A Rose, N %A Jones, V %A Solovieva, N %A Cook Shinneman, A %A Umbanhowar, C %A Fritz, S %A Verschuren, D %A Saros, J %A Russell, J %A Bindler, R %A Valero-Garces, B %A Edlund, M %A Dietz, R %A Myrbo, A %D 2020 %F discovery:10091588 %J Science Advances %N 16 %T Anthropogenic alteration of nutrient supply increases the global freshwater carbon sink %U https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10091588/ %V 6 %X Lakes have a disproportionate effect on the global carbon (C) cycle relative to their area, mediating C transfer from land to atmosphere, and burying organic-C in their sediments. The magnitude and temporal variability of C burial is, however, poorly constrained, and the degree to which humans have influenced lake C cycling through landscape alteration has not been systematically assessed. Here, we report global and biome specific trajectories of lake C sequestration based on 516 lakes and show that some lake C burial rates (i.e., those in tropical forest and grassland biomes) have quadrupled over the last 100 years. Global lake C-sequestration (~0.12 Pg year−1) has increased by ~72 Tg year−1 since 1900, offsetting 20% of annual CO2 freshwater emissions rising to ~30% if reservoirs are included and contributing to the residual continental C sink. Nutrient availability explains ~70% of the observed increase, while rising temperatures have a minimal effect. %Z © 2020 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, so long as the resultant use is not for commercial advantage and provided the original work is properly cited.