Ecological controls on methane emissions from a Northern Peatland Complex in the zone of discontinuous permafrost, Manitoba, Canada

Bubier, Jill L.; Moore, Tim R.; Bellisario, Lianne; Comer, Neil T.; Crill, Patrick

doi:10.1029/95gb02379

Cited by 261 publications

(221 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Talik formation can lead to significant groundwater input and the minerotrophic conditions that support fen vegetation. Methane emissions from collapse-scar bogs and fens increase as both a function of surface inundation from permafrost thaw and increased NPP, which is related to both temperature and nutrient availability (Bubier et al, 1995;. In a metadata analysis of methane emissions from global wetlands, Turetsky et al (2014) found that sites with permafrost emitted the least amount of methane, and that fens on average emit more than bogs.…”

Section: Potential Changes In Carbon Sources and Sinks With Permafrosmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sources and sinks of carbon in boreal ecosystems of interior Alaska: A review

Douglas

Jones

Hiemstra

et al. 2014

Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene

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Boreal ecosystems store large quantities of carbon but are increasingly vulnerable to carbon loss due to disturbance and climate warming. The boreal region in Alaska and Canada, largely underlain by discontinuous permafrost, presents a challenging landscape for itemizing carbon sources and sinks in soil and vegetation. The roles of fire, forest succession, and the presence (or absence) of permafrost on carbon cycle, vegetation, and hydrologic processes have been the focus of multidisciplinary research in boreal ecosystems for the past 20 years. However, projections of a warming future climate, an increase in fire severity and extent, and the potential degradation of permafrost could lead to major landscape and carbon cycle changes over the next 20 to 50 years. To assist land managers in interior Alaska in adapting and managing for potential changes in the carbon cycle we developed this review paper by incorporating an overview of the climate, ecosystem processes, vegetation, and soil regimes. Our objective is to provide a synthesis of the most current carbon storage estimates and measurements to guide policy and land management decisions on how to best manage carbon sources and sinks. We surveyed estimates of aboveground and belowground carbon stocks for interior Alaska boreal ecosystems and summarized methane and carbon dioxide f luxes. These data have been converted into similar units to facilitate comparison across ecosystem compartments. We identify potential changes in the carbon cycle with climate change and human disturbance. A novel research question is how compounding disturbances affect carbon sources and sinks associated with boreal ecosystem processes. Finally, we provide recommendations to address the challenges facing land managers in efforts to manage carbon cycle processes. The results of this study can be used for carbon cycle management in other locations within the boreal biome which encompasses a broad distribution from 45° to 83° north.

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Section: Potential Changes In Carbon Sources and Sinks With Permafrosmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sources and sinks of carbon in boreal ecosystems of interior Alaska: A review

Douglas

Jones

Hiemstra

et al. 2014

Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene

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“…Soil that has been frozen for thousands of years still contains viable populations of methanotrophic bacteria (Rivkina et al, 2004). The flux of methane from peat soils to the atmosphere also depends on the location of the water table, which controls the thickness of the oxic zone (Bubier et al, 1995(Bubier et al, , 2005Liblik et al, 1997). If 20% of the peat reservoir converted to methane, released over 100 years, this would release 0.7 Gton C per year, doubling the atmospheric methane concentration.…”

Section: Land Depositsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Methane hydrate stability and anthropogenic climate change

2007

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Abstract. Methane frozen into hydrate makes up a large reservoir of potentially volatile carbon below the sea floor and associated with permafrost soils. This reservoir intuitively seems precarious, because hydrate ice floats in water, and melts at Earth surface conditions. The hydrate reservoir is so large that if 10% of the methane were released to the atmosphere within a few years, it would have an impact on the Earth's radiation budget equivalent to a factor of 10 increase in atmospheric CO 2 .Hydrates are releasing methane to the atmosphere today in response to anthropogenic warming, for example along the Arctic coastline of Siberia. However most of the hydrates are located at depths in soils and ocean sediments where anthropogenic warming and any possible methane release will take place over time scales of millennia. Individual catastrophic releases like landslides and pockmark explosions are too small to reach a sizable fraction of the hydrates. The carbon isotopic excursion at the end of the Paleocene has been interpreted as the release of thousands of Gton C, possibly from hydrates, but the time scale of the release appears to have been thousands of years, chronic rather than catastrophic.The potential climate impact in the coming century from hydrate methane release is speculative but could be comparable to climate feedbacks from the terrestrial biosphere and from peat, significant but not catastrophic. On geologic timescales, it is conceivable that hydrates could release as much carbon to the atmosphere/ocean system as we do by fossil fuel combustion.

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“…The multiple regression analysis of lumped data across Stordalen also showed similar trends to other temperate, boreal or arctic peatlands. For example, a peatland complex sampled in the discontinuous permafrost region of Manitoba, Canada by Bubier et al (1995) showed a best fit model including WTD, water chemistry and vegetation variables explaining 81 % of the variance in CH 4 fluxes. Bubier et al (1995) reported WTD as being the strongest individual correlate with the CH 4 fluxes, but in our best fit model, WTD was not an important variable likely because the stages with little or no thaw had no water table.…”

Section: Across Peatland Correlates Of C Fluxesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, a peatland complex sampled in the discontinuous permafrost region of Manitoba, Canada by Bubier et al (1995) showed a best fit model including WTD, water chemistry and vegetation variables explaining 81 % of the variance in CH 4 fluxes. Bubier et al (1995) reported WTD as being the strongest individual correlate with the CH 4 fluxes, but in our best fit model, WTD was not an important variable likely because the stages with little or no thaw had no water table. Elevation seems to be a better proxy for soil moisture (and other CH 4 controls), showing the highest contribution to the best fit model (Table 2).…”

Section: Across Peatland Correlates Of C Fluxesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental correlates of peatland carbon fluxes in a thawing landscape: do transitional thaw stages matter?

Malhotra

Roulet

2015

Biogeosciences

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Abstract. Peatlands in discontinuous permafrost regions occur as a mosaic of wetland types, each with variable sensitivity to climate change. Permafrost thaw further increases the spatial heterogeneity in ecosystem structure and function in peatlands. Carbon (C) fluxes are well characterized in endmember thaw stages such as fully intact or fully thawed permafrost but remain unconstrained for transitional stages that cover a significant area of thawing peatlands. Furthermore, changes in the environmental correlates of C fluxes, due to thaw, are not well described -a requirement for modeling future changes to C storage of permafrost peatlands. We investigated C fluxes and their correlates in end-member and a number of transitional thaw stages in a sub-arctic peatland. Across peatland-lumped CH 4 and CO 2 flux data had significant correlations with expected correlates such as water table depth, thaw depth, temperature, photosynthetically active radiation and vascular green area. Within individual thaw states, bivariate correlations as well as multiple regressions between C flux and environmental factors changed variably with increasing thaw. The variability in directions and magnitudes of correlates reflects the range of structural conditions that could be present along a thaw gradient. These structural changes correspond to changes in C flux controls, such as temperature and moisture, and their interactions. Temperature sensitivity of CH 4 increased with increasing thaw in bivariate analyses, but lack of this trend in multiple regression analyses suggested cofounding effects of substrate or water limitation on the apparent temperature sensitivity. Our results emphasize the importance of incorporating transitional stages of thaw in landscape level C budgets and highlight that end-member or adjacent thaw stages do not adequately describe the variability in structure-function relationships present along a thaw gradient.

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Ecological controls on methane emissions from a Northern Peatland Complex in the zone of discontinuous permafrost, Manitoba, Canada

Cited by 261 publications

References 34 publications

Sources and sinks of carbon in boreal ecosystems of interior Alaska: A review

Sources and sinks of carbon in boreal ecosystems of interior Alaska: A review

Methane hydrate stability and anthropogenic climate change

Environmental correlates of peatland carbon fluxes in a thawing landscape: do transitional thaw stages matter?

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