Responses of CO2 emission and pore water DOC concentration to soil warming and water table drawdown in Zoige Peatlands

Publication date: March 2017
Source:Atmospheric Environment, Volume 152
Author(s): Gang Yang, Mei Wang, Huai Chen, Liangfeng Liu, Ning Wu, Dan Zhu, Jianqing Tian, Changhui Peng, Qiuan Zhu, Yixin He
Peatlands in Zoige Plateau contains more than half of peatland carbon stock in China. This part of carbon is losing with climate change through dissolved organic carbon (DOC) export and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, both of which are vulnerable to the environmental changes, especially on the Zoige Plateau with a pace of twice the observed rate of global climate warming. This research aimed to understand how climate change including soil warming, rainfall reduction and water table change affect CO2 emissions and whether the trends of changes in CO2 emission are consistent with those of pore water DOC concentration. A mesocosm experiment was designed to investigate the CO2 emission and pore water DOC during the growing seasons of 2009–2010 under scenarios of passive soil warming, 20% rainfall reduction and changes to the water table levels. The results showed a positive relationship between CO2 emission and DOC concentration. For single factor effect, we found no significant relationship between water table and CO2 emission or DOC concentration. However, temperature at 5 cm depth was found to have positive linear relationship with CO2 emission and DOC concentration. The combined effect of soil warming and rainfall reduction increased CO2 emission by 96.8%. It suggested that the drying and warming could stimulate potential emission of CO2. Extending this result to the entire peatland area in Zoige Plateau translates into 0.45 Tg CO2 emission per year over a growing season. These results suggested that the dryer and warmer Zoige Plateau will increase CO2 emission. We also found the contribution rate of DOC concentration to CO2 emission was increased by 12.1% in the surface layer and decreased by 13.8% in the subsurface layer with combined treatment of soil warming and rainfall reduction, which indicated that the warmer and dryer environmental conditions stimulate surface peat decomposition process.

Graphical abstract

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