| 1. |
- Hough, Moira, et al.
(författare)
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Coupling plant litter quantity to a novel metric for litter quality explains C storage changes in a thawing permafrost peatland
- 2022
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Ingår i: Global Change Biology. - : Wiley. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 28:3, s. 950-968
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Permafrost thaw is a major potential feedback source to climate change as it can drive the increased release of greenhouse gases carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4). This carbon release from the decomposition of thawing soil organic material can be mitigated by increased net primary productivity (NPP) caused by warming, increasing atmospheric CO2, and plant community transition. However, the net effect on C storage also depends on how these plant community changes alter plant litter quantity, quality, and decomposition rates. Predicting decomposition rates based on litter quality remains challenging, but a promising new way forward is to incorporate measures of the energetic favorability to soil microbes of plant biomass decomposition. We asked how the variation in one such measure, the nominal oxidation state of carbon (NOSC), interacts with changing quantities of plant material inputs to influence the net C balance of a thawing permafrost peatland. We found: (1) Plant productivity (NPP) increased post-thaw, but instead of contributing to increased standing biomass, it increased plant biomass turnover via increased litter inputs to soil; (2) Plant litter thermodynamic favorability (NOSC) and decomposition rate both increased post-thaw, despite limited changes in bulk C:N ratios; (3) these increases caused the higher NPP to cycle more rapidly through both plants and soil, contributing to higher CO2 and CH4 fluxes from decomposition. Thus, the increased C-storage expected from higher productivity was limited and the high global warming potential of CH4 contributed a net positive warming effect. Although post-thaw peatlands are currently C sinks due to high NPP offsetting high CO2 release, this status is very sensitive to the plant community's litter input rate and quality. Integration of novel bioavailability metrics based on litter chemistry, including NOSC, into studies of ecosystem dynamics, is needed to improve the understanding of controls on arctic C stocks under continued ecosystem transition.
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| 2. |
- Wilson, Rachel M., et al.
(författare)
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Plant organic matter inputs exert a strong control on soil organic matter decomposition in a thawing permafrost peatland
- 2022
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Ingår i: Science of the Total Environment. - : Elsevier BV. - 0048-9697 .- 1879-1026. ; 820
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Peatlands are climate critical carbon (C) reservoirs that could become a C source under continued warming. A strong relationship between plant tissue chemistry and the soil organic matter (SOM) that fuels C gas emissions is inferred, but rarely examined at the molecular level. Here we compared Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy measurements of solid phase functionalities in plants and SOM to ultra-high-resolution mass spectrometric analyses of plant and SOM water extracts across a palsa-bog-fen thaw and moisture gradient in an Arctic peatland. From these analyses we calculated the C oxidation state (NOSC), a measure which can be used to assess organic matter quality. Palsa plant extracts had the highest NOSC, indicating high quality, whereas extracts of Sphagnum, which dominated the bog, had the lowest NOSC. The percentage of plant compounds that are less bioavailable and accumulate in the peat, increases from palsa (25%) to fen (41%) to bog (47%), reflecting the pattern of percent Sphagnum cover. The pattern of NOSC in the plant extracts was consistent with the high number of consumed compounds in the palsa and low number of consumed compounds in the bog. However, in the FT-IR analysis of the solid phase bog peat, carbohydrate content was high implying high quality SOM. We explain this discrepancy as the result of low solubilization of bog SOM facilitated by the low pH in the bog which makes the solid phase carbohydrates less available to microbial decomposition. Plant-associated condensed aromatics, tannins, and lignin-like compounds declined in the unsaturated palsa peat indicating decomposition, but lignin-like compounds accumulated in the bog and fen peat where decomposition was presumably inhibited by the anaerobic conditions. A molecular-level comparison of the aboveground C sources and peat SOM demonstrates that climate-associated vegetation shifts in peatlands are important controls on the mechanisms underlying changing C gas emissions.
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| 3. |
- Ellenbogen, Jared B., et al.
(författare)
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Methylotrophy in the Mire : direct and indirect routes for methane production in thawing permafrost
- 2024
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Ingår i: mSystems. - 2379-5077. ; 9:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- While wetlands are major sources of biogenic methane (CH4), our understanding of resident microbial metabolism is incomplete, which compromises the prediction of CH4 emissions under ongoing climate change. Here, we employed genome-resolved multi-omics to expand our understanding of methanogenesis in the thawing permafrost peatland of Stordalen Mire in Arctic Sweden. In quadrupling the genomic representation of the site’s methanogens and examining their encoded metabolism, we revealed that nearly 20% of the metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) encoded the potential for methylotrophic methanogenesis. Further, 27% of the transcriptionally active methanogens expressed methylotrophic genes; for Methanosarcinales and Methanobacteriales MAGs, these data indicated the use of methylated oxygen compounds (e.g., methanol), while for Methanomassiliicoccales, they primarily implicated methyl sulfides and methylamines. In addition to methanogenic methylotrophy, >1,700 bacterial MAGs across 19 phyla encoded anaerobic methylotrophic potential, with expression across 12 phyla. Metabolomic analyses revealed the presence of diverse methylated compounds in the Mire, including some known methylotrophic substrates. Active methylotrophy was observed across all stages of a permafrost thaw gradient in Stordalen, with the most frozen non-methanogenic palsa found to host bacterial methylotrophy and the partially thawed bog and fully thawed fen seen to house both methanogenic and bacterial methylotrophic activities. Methanogenesis across increasing permafrost thaw is thus revised from the sole dominance of hydrogenotrophic production and the appearance of acetoclastic at full thaw to consider the co-occurrence of methylotrophy throughout. Collectively, these findings indicate that methanogenic and bacterial methylotrophy may be an important and previously underappreciated component of carbon cycling and emissions in these rapidly changing wetland habitats.
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| 4. |
- Fofana, Aminata, et al.
(författare)
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Mapping substrate use across a permafrost thaw gradient
- 2022
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Ingår i: Soil Biology and Biochemistry. - : Elsevier Ltd. - 0038-0717 .- 1879-3428. ; 175
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Permafrost thaw in northern peatlands is likely to create a positive feedback to climate change, as microbes transform soil carbon (C) into carbon dioxide (CO2) or methane (CH4). While the microbiome's encoded C-processing potential changes with thaw, the impact on substrate utilization and gas emissions is less well characterized. We therefore examined microbial C-cycling dynamics from a partially thawed Sphagnum-dominated bog to a fully thawed sedge-dominated fen in Stordalen Mire (68.35°N, 19.05°E), Sweden. We profiled C substrate utilization diversity and extent by Biolog Ecoplates™, then tested substrate-specific hypotheses by targeted additions (of glucose, the short chain fatty acids (SCFAs) acetate and butyrate, and the organic acids galacturonic acid and p-hydroxybenzoic acid, all at field-relevant concentrations) under anaerobic conditions at 15 °C. In parallel we characterized microbiomes (via 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing and quantitative polymerase chain reaction) and C gas emissions. The fen exhibited a higher substrate use diversity and faster rate of overall substrate utilization than in the bog, based on Biolog Ecoplate™ incubations. Simple glucose additions (akin to a positive control) to peat microcosms fueled fermentation as expected (reflected in enriched fermenter lineages, their inferred metabolisms, and CO2 production), but also showed potential priming of anaerobic phenol degradation in the bog. Addition of SCFAs to bog and fen produced the least change in lineages and in CO2, and modest suppression of CH4 primarily in the fen, attributed to inhibition. Addition of both organic acids greatly increased the CO2:CH4 ratio in the deep peats but had distinct individual gas dynamics and impacts on microbiota. Both organic acids appeared to act as both C source and as a microbial inhibitor, with galacturonic acid also likely playing a role in electron transfer or acceptance. Collectively, these results support the importance of aboveground-belowground linkages - and in particular the role of Sphagnum spp.- in supplying substrates and inhibitors that drive microbiome assembly and C processing in these dynamically changing systems. In addition, they highlight an important temporal dynamic: responses on the short time scale of incubations (which would reflect transition conditions in the field) differ from those evident at the longer scales of habitat transition, in ways consequential to C gas emissions. In the short term, substrate addition response reflected microbiome legacy (e.g., bog communities were slower to process C and better tolerated inhibitors than fen communities) but led to little overall increase in C gas production (and a high skew to CO2). At the longer time scale of bog and fen thaw stages (which are used to represent these systems in models) the concomitant shifts in plants, hydrology and microbiota attenuate microbiome legacy impacts on substrate processing and C gas emissions over time. As habitat transition areas expand under accelerating change, we hypothesize an increased role of microbiome legacy in the landscape overall, leading to a lag in the increase of CH4 emissions expected from fen expansion.
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| 5. |
- Hodgkins, Suzanne B., et al.
(författare)
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Changes in peat chemistry associated with permafrost thaw increase greenhouse gas production
- 2014
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Ingår i: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. - : Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. - 0027-8424 .- 1091-6490. ; 111:16, s. 5819-5824
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Carbon release due to permafrost thaw represents a potentially major positive climate change feedback. The magnitude of carbon loss and the proportion lost as methane (CH4) vs. carbon dioxide (CO2) depend on factors including temperature, mobilization of previously frozen carbon, hydrology, and changes in organic matter chemistry associated with environmental responses to thaw. While the first three of these effects are relatively well understood, the effect of organic matter chemistry remains largely un-studied. To address this gap, we examined the biogeochemistry of peat and dissolved organic matter (DOM) along a similar to 40-y permafrost thaw progression from recently- to fully thawed sites in Stordalen Mire (68.35 degrees N, 19.05 degrees E), a thawing peat plateau in northern Sweden. Thaw-induced subsidence and the resulting inundation along this progression led to succession in vegetation types accompanied by an evolution in organic matter chemistry. Peat C/N ratios decreased whereas humification rates increased, and DOM shifted toward lower molecular weight compounds with lower aromaticity, lower organic oxygen content, and more abundant microbially produced compounds. Corresponding changes in decomposition along this gradient included increasing CH4 and CO2 production potentials, higher relative CH4/CO2 ratios, and a shift in CH4 production pathway from CO2 reduction to acetate cleavage. These results imply that subsidence and thermokarst-associated increases in organic matter lability cause shifts in biogeochemical processes toward faster decomposition with an increasing proportion of carbon released as CH4. This impact of permafrost thaw on organic matter chemistry could intensify the predicted climate feedbacks of increasing temperatures, permafrost carbon mobilization, and hydrologic changes.
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| 6. |
- Hodgkins, Suzanne B., et al.
(författare)
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Elemental composition and optical properties reveal changes in dissolved organic matter along a permafrost thaw chronosequence in a subarctic peatland
- 2016
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Ingår i: Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta. - : Elsevier BV. - 0016-7037 .- 1872-9533. ; 187, s. 123-140
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The fate of carbon stored in permafrost-zone peatlands represents a significant uncertainty in global climate modeling. Given that the breakdown of dissolved organic matter (DOM) is often a major pathway for decomposition in peatlands, knowledge of DOM reactivity under different permafrost regimes is critical for determining future climate feedbacks. To explore the effects of permafrost thaw and resultant plant succession on DOM reactivity, we used a combination of Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (FT-ICR MS), UV/Vis absorbance, and excitation-emission matrix spectroscopy (EEMS) to examine the DOM elemental composition and optical properties of 27 pore water samples gathered from various sites along a permafrost thaw sequence in Stordalen Mire, a thawing subarctic peatland in northern Sweden. The presence of dense Sphagnum moss, a feature that is dominant in the intermediate thaw stages, appeared to be the main driver of variation in DOM elemental composition and optical properties at Stordalen. Specifically, DOM from sites with Sphagnum had greater aromaticity, higher average molecular weights, and greater O/C, consistent with a higher abundance of phenolic compounds that likely inhibit decomposition. These compounds are released by Sphagnum and may accumulate due to inhibition of phenol oxidase activity by the acidic pH at these sites. In contrast, sites without Sphagnum, specifically fully-thawed rich fens, had more saturated, more reduced compounds, which were high in N and S. Optical properties at rich fens indicated the presence of microbially-derived DOM, consistent with the higher decomposition rates previously measured at these sites. These results indicate that Sphagnum acts as an inhibitor of rapid decomposition and CH4 release in thawing subarctic peatlands, consistent with lower rates of CO2 and CH4 production previously observed at these sites. However, this inhibitory effect may disappear if Sphagnum-dominated bogs transition to more waterlogged rich fens that contain very little to no living Sphagnum. Release of this inhibition allows for higher levels of microbial activity and potentially greater CH4 release, as has been observed in these fen sites.
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| 7. |
- Wilson, Rachel M., et al.
(författare)
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Hydrogenation of organic matter as a terminal electron sink sustains high CO2 : CH4 production ratios during anaerobic decomposition
- 2017
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Ingår i: Organic Geochemistry. - : Elsevier BV. - 0146-6380 .- 1873-5290. ; 112, s. 22-32
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Once inorganic electron acceptors are depleted, organic matter in anoxic environments decomposes by hydrolysis, fermentation, and methanogenesis, requiring syntrophic interactions between microorganisms to achieve energetic favorability. In this classic anaerobic food chain, methanogenesis represents the terminal electron accepting (TEA) process, ultimately producing equimolar CO2 and CH4 for each molecule of organic matter degraded. However, CO2:CH4 production in Sphagnum-derived, mineral-poor, cellulosic peat often substantially exceeds this 1:1 ratio, even in the absence of measureable inorganic TEAs. Since the oxidation state of C in both cellulose-derived organic matter and acetate is 0, and CO2 has an oxidation state of +4, if CH4 (oxidation state -4) is not produced in equal ratio, then some other compound(s) must balance CO2 production by receiving 4 electrons. Here we present evidence for ubiquitous hydrogenation of diverse unsaturated compounds that appear to serve as organic TEAs in peat, thereby providing the necessary electron balance to sustain CO2:CH4 > 1. While organic electron acceptors have previously been proposed to drive microbial respiration of organic matter through the reversible reduction of quinone moieties, the hydrogenation mechanism that we propose, by contrast, reduces CAC double bonds in organic matter thereby serving as (1) a terminal electron sink, (2) a mechanism for degrading complex unsaturated organic molecules, (3) a potential mechanism to regenerate electron-accepting quinones, and, in some cases, (4) a means to alleviate the toxicity of unsaturated aromatic acids. This mechanism for CO2 generation without concomitant CH4 production has the potential to regulate the global warming potential of peatlands by elevating CO2:CH4 production ratios.
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| 8. |
- Li, Hui, et al.
(författare)
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Simple plant and microbial exudates destabilize mineral-Associated organic matter via multiple pathways
- 2021
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Ingår i: Environmental Science and Technology. - : American Chemical Society (ACS). - 0013-936X .- 1520-5851. ; 55:5, s. 3389-3398
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Most mineral-Associated organic matter (MAOM) is protected against microbial attack, thereby contributing to longterm carbon storage in soils. However, the extent to which reactive compounds released by plants and microbes may destabilize MAOM and so enhance microbial access, as well as the underlying mechanisms, remain unclear. Here, we tested the ability of functionally distinct model exudates-ligands, reductants, and simple sugars-To promote microbial utilization of monomeric MAOM, bound via outer-sphere complexes to common iron and aluminum (hydr)oxide minerals. The strong ligand oxalic acid induced rapid MAOM mineralization, coinciding with greater sorption to and dissolution of minerals, suggestive of direct MAOM mobilization mechanisms. In contrast, the simple sugar glucose caused slower MAOM mineralization, but stimulated microbial activity and metabolite production, indicating an indirect microbially-mediated mechanism. Catechol, acting as reductant, promoted both mechanisms. While MAOM on ferrihydrite showed the greatest vulnerability to both direct and indirect mechanisms, MAOM on other (hydr)oxides was more susceptible to direct mechanisms. These findings suggest that MAOM persistence, and thus longterm carbon storage within a given soil, is not just a function of mineral reactivity but also depends on the capacity of plant roots and associated microbes to produce reactive compounds capable of triggering specific destabilization mechanisms.
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