Continental-Scale Effects of Nutrient Pollution on Stream Ecosystem Functioning

Woodward, Guy; Gessner, Mark O.; Giller, Paul S.; Gulis, Vladislav; Hladyz, Sally; Lecerf, Antoine; Malmqvist, Björn; McKie, Brendan G.; Tiegs, Scott D.; Cariss, Helen; Dobson, Michael; Elosegi, Arturo; Ferreira, Verónica; Graça, Manuel A. S.; Fleituch, Tadeusz; Lacoursière, Jean O.; Nistorescu, Marius; Pozo, Jesús; Rîşnoveanu, Geta; Schindler, Markus; Vădineanu, Angheluţă; Vought, Lena B. M.; Chauvet, Éric

doi:10.1126/science.1219534

Cited by 562 publications

(543 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Nevertheless, the low nutrient concentration of the study stream might help explain the generally limited response of litter decomposition to experimental warming. Litter decomposition is usually lower under oligotrophic conditions (Gulis et al 2006;Woodward et al 2012) and the effect of warming might have been limited by the low nutrient availability . In addition, the short duration (1 year) and the lack of replication, which is often associated with ecosystem-scale manipulations (e.g., Hogg and Williams 1996;Gulis and Suberkropp 2003), need to be taken into account.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Overall litter decomposition was given by the AFDM lost from CM bags, while microbial-driven litter decomposition was given by the AFDM lost from FM bags. Litter decomposition attributed to invertebrates alone was calculated as the difference between AFDM lost from CM bags and AFDM lost from FM bags (Woodward et al 2012). The potential effect of physical fragmentation on litter-mass loss was assumed to be negligible since the discharge in each stream half was very low ).…”

Section: Leaf Litter Decompositionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Effect of experimental and seasonal warming on litter decomposition in a temperate stream

Ferreira

Canhoto

2013

Aquat Sci

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Litter decomposition, a fundamental ecosystem process in woodland streams, is potentially affected by the predicted increase in water temperature. Here, we assessed the effects of experimental and seasonal warming on oak litter decomposition and on the relative contributions of microbes and invertebrates to this process. Experimental warming (*3°C) stimulated litter decomposition in the coldest, but not in the warmest, months. This may be attributed to (1) higher temperature sensitivity of decomposition at lower ambient temperature due to temperature limitation of enzymatic activity, (2) higher relative temperature increase in winter than in warmer months, (3) existence of a previous warming period in winter, and (4) stronger stimulation of the activity of detritivores by warming in winter due to the prevalence of earlier (smaller) instars than in warmer months. The low response of litter decomposition to warming may have been due to the low nutrient availability in the study stream. The 30-day litter decomposition was stimulated over the seasonal gradient (monthly mean temperature: 6-16°C), which may be attributed to a stimulation of metabolic activities by warming and to changes in detritivore life history over the seasons. The stimulation of litter decomposition with temperature suggests that the rate of CO 2 release from freshwaters will increase under global warming. However, invertebrate-driven litter decomposition was more responsive to warming than microbial-driven litter decomposition, suggesting that a larger fraction of litter carbon may be converted into secondary production and stored in the system for longer periods.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Leaf Litter Decompositionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of experimental and seasonal warming on litter decomposition in a temperate stream

Ferreira

Canhoto

2013

Aquat Sci

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“…3.1.4., rice cultivation paragraph). Even with this definition, one can consider that part of the wetlands could be considered as anthropogenic systems, being affected by human-driven land-use changes (Woodward et al, 2012). In the following we keep the generic denomination wetlands for natural and human-influenced wetlands.…”

Section: Wetlandsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The global methane budget 2000–2012

Saunois

Bousquet

Poulter

et al. 2016

Earth Syst. Sci. Data

945

733

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Abstract. The global methane (CH 4 ) budget is becoming an increasingly important component for managing realistic pathways to mitigate climate change. This relevance, due to a shorter atmospheric lifetime and a stronger warming potential than carbon dioxide, is challenged by the still unexplained changes of atmospheric CH 4 over the past decade. Emissions and concentrations of CH 4 are continuing to increase, making CH 4 the second most important human-induced greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide. Two major difficulties in reducing uncertainties come from the large variety of diffusive CH 4 sources that overlap geographically, and from the destruction of CH 4 by the very short-lived hydroxyl radical (OH). To address these difficulties, we have established a consortium of multi-disciplinary scientists under the umbrella of the Global Carbon Project to synthesize and stimulate research on the methane cycle, and producing regular (∼ biennial) updates of the global methane budget. This consortium includes atmospheric physicists and chemists, biogeochemists of surface and marine emissions, and socio-economists who study anthropogenic emissions. Following Kirschke et al. (2013), we propose here the first version of a living review paper that integrates results of top-down studies (exploiting atmospheric observations within an atmospheric inverse-modelling framework) and bottom-up models, inventories and data-driven approaches (including process-based models for estimating land surface emissions and atmospheric chemistry, and inventories for anthropogenic emissions, data-driven extrapolations). . Top-down inversions consistently infer lower emissions in China (∼ 58 Tg CH 4 yr −1 , range 51-72, −14 %) and higher emissions in Africa (86 Tg CH 4 yr −1 , range 73-108, +19 %) than bottom-up values used as prior estimates. Overall, uncertainties for anthropogenic emissions appear smaller than those from natural sources, and the uncertainties on source categories appear larger for top-down inversions than for bottom-up inventories and models.The most important source of uncertainty on the methane budget is attributable to emissions from wetland and other inland waters. We show that the wetland extent could contribute 30-40 % on the estimated range for wetland emissions. Other priorities for improving the methane budget include the following: (i) the development of process-based models for inland-water emissions, (ii) the intensification of methane observations at local scale (flux measurements) to constrain bottom-up land surface models, and at regional scale (surface networks and satellites) to constrain top-down inversions, (iii) improvements in the estimation of atmospheric loss by OH, and (iv) improvements of the transport models integrated in top-down inversions.

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“…This suggests that spatial changes in biodiversity or environmental characteristics within ecological landscapes will affect functional performance. To date this has not been explicitly investigated, although, on larger continental scales, studies of terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems have highlighted strong spatial variation in BEF relationships [15,16]. A global BEF statistical model can always be built from such large-scale data sets, but its explanatory power may be low and it may be limited in predicting local relationships or changes with specific environmental conditions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Changes in the location of biodiversity–ecosystem function hot spots across the seafloor landscape with increasing sediment nutrient loading

et al. 2017

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Declining biodiversity and loss of ecosystem function threatens the ability of habitats to contribute ecosystem services. However, the form of the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem function (BEF) and how relationships change with environmental change is poorly understood. This limits our ability to predict the consequences of biodiversity loss on ecosystem function, particularly in real-world marine ecosystems that are species rich, and where multiple ecosystem functions are represented by multiple indicators. We investigated spatial variation in BEF relationships across a 300 000 m 2 intertidal sandflat by nesting experimental manipulations of sediment pore water nitrogen concentration into sites with contrasting macrobenthic community composition. Our results highlight the significance of many different elements of biodiversity associated with environmental characteristics, community structure, functional diversity, ecological traits or particular species (ecosystem engineers) to important functions of coastal marine sediments (benthic oxygen consumption, ammonium pore water concentrations and flux across the sediment-water interface). Using the BEF relationships developed from our experiment, we demonstrate patchiness across a landscape in functional performance and the potential for changes in the location of functional hot and cold spots with increasing nutrient loading that have important implications for mapping and predicating change in functionality and the concomitant delivery of ecosystem services.

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Continental-Scale Effects of Nutrient Pollution on Stream Ecosystem Functioning

Cited by 562 publications

References 27 publications

Effect of experimental and seasonal warming on litter decomposition in a temperate stream

Effect of experimental and seasonal warming on litter decomposition in a temperate stream

The global methane budget 2000–2012

Changes in the location of biodiversity–ecosystem function hot spots across the seafloor landscape with increasing sediment nutrient loading

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