Basalt weathering across scales

Weathering of silicate minerals impacts many geological and ecological processes. For example, the weathering of basalt contributes significantly to consumption of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and must be included in global calculations of such consumption over geological timeframes. Here we compare weathering advance rates for basalt (wD β ), where D and β indicate the scale at which the rate is determined and surface area measured, respectively, from the laboratory to the watershed scales. Data collected at the laboratory, weathering rind, soil profile and watershed scales show that weathering advance rate of basalt is a fractal property that can be described by a fractal dimension (dr≈2.3). By combining the fractal description of rates with an Arrhenius relationship for basalt weathering, we derive the following equation to predict weathering advance rates at any spatial scale from weathering advance rates measured at the BET scale: