Carbon fluxes in forested bog margins along a human impact gradient: Could vegetation structure be used as an indicator of peat carbon emissions?
Abstract:
Bog ecosystems are sensitive to anthropogenic disturbance, including drainage and air pollution. Carbon (C) balance measurements to determine the effect of disturbance on bog functioning are laborious; therefore reliable proxies for C fluxes that could facilitate upscaling from single studies to a larger scale would be valuable. We measured peat CO2 emissions (R s), CH4 efflux and vegetation characteristics in four bog areas that formed a gradient from pristine to severely disturbed peatlands, affected by drainage, peat mining, alkaline air pollution and underground oil-shale mining. We expected that sites experiencing higher human impact (i.e., the vegetation was more distinct from that of a natural bog) would have higher R s and lower CH4 emissions, but differences in peat C emissions between the most disturbed and pristine sites were not significant. Growing period median R s ranged from 0.5 to 2.2 g C m−2 day−1 for our plots; methane emissions, measured from July to December were an order of magnitude lower, ranging from −5.9 to 126.7 mg C m−2 day−1. R s and CH4 emissions were primarily determined by water table depth, as was tree stand productivity. Therefore, stand structural parameters could potentially be good indicators of soil C emissions from poorly drained forested bogs.
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