River Lithium-7 Flux (2023)

Undergraduate: Yang Jianing

Faculty Advisor: Xiaoming Liu
Department: Geological Science, Geology

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This research aims to construct current-world lithium river discharge data by utilizing lithium concentration data collected by past research, specifically in response to Huh et al.'s research on calculating the Lithium discharge value in 1998. More data on Lithium concentration and Lithium isotope values collected from 1998 to 2023 will also be used in this project. The work will be entirely computational, based on existing data of published Lithium river systems and river discharge. A configuration between Lithium concentration and Lithium isotope concentration against the amount of river discharge will be developed, which can be used to calculate the annual total Lithium discharge globally based on existing data. The river discharge data will be taken from the Global Runoff Data Centre, a reputable and well-established data compilation source for river discharge. Understanding the current-world lithium river discharge data will help establish the lithium system as a new analytical method applicable to studies on continental weathering, recycling of materials on Earth's mantle, and for future research concerning environmental and global-warming related discharge and weather pattern history.

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