| 1. |
- Johansson, T, et al.
(författare)
-
Decadal vegetation changes in a northern peatland, greenhouse gas fluxes and net radiative forcing
- 2006
-
Ingår i: Global Change Biology. - : Wiley. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 12:12, s. 2352-2369
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Thawing permafrost in the sub-Arctic has implications for the physical stability and biological dynamics of peatland ecosystems. This study provides an analysis of how permafrost thawing and subsequent vegetation changes in a sub-Arctic Swedish mire have changed the net exchange of greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide (CO2) and CH4 over the past three decades. Images of the mire (ca. 17 ha) and surroundings taken with film sensitive in the visible and the near infrared portion of the spectrum, [i.e. colour infrared (CIR) aerial photographs from 1970 and 2000] were used. The results show that during this period the area covered by hummock vegetation decreased by more than 11% and became replaced by wet-growing plant communities. The overall net uptake of C in the vegetation and the release of C by heterotrophic respiration might have increased resulting in increases in both the growing season atmospheric CO2 sink function with about 16% and the CH4 emissions with 22%. Calculating the flux as CO2 equivalents show that the mire in 2000 has a 47% greater radiative forcing on the atmosphere using a 100-year time horizon. Northern peatlands in areas with thawing sporadic or discontinuous permafrost are likely to act as larger greenhouse gas sources over the growing season today than a few decades ago because of increased CH4 emissions.
|
|
| 2. |
- Kokfelt, Ulla, et al.
(författare)
-
Ecosystem responses to increased precipitation and permafrost decay in subarctic Sweden inferred from peat and lake sediments
- 2009
-
Ingår i: Global Change Biology. - : Wiley. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 15:7, s. 1652-1663
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Recent accelerated decay of discontinuous permafrost at the Stordalen Mire in northern Sweden has been attributed to increased temperature and snow depth, and has caused expansion of wet minerotrophic areas leading to significant changes in carbon cycling in the mire. In order to track these changes through time and evaluate potential forcing mechanisms, this paper analyses a peat succession and a lake sediment sequence from within the mire, providing a record for the last 100 years, and compares these with monitored climate and active layer thickness data. The peat core was analysed for testate amoebae to reconstruct changes in peatland surface moisture conditions and water table fluctuations. The lake sediment core was analysed by near infrared spectroscopy to infer changes in the total organic carbon (TOC) concentration of the lake-water, and changes in δ13C and C, N and δ15N to track changes in the dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) pool and the influence of diagenetic effects on sediment organic matter, respectively. Results showed that major shifts towards increased peat surface moisture and TOC concentration of the lake-water occurred around 1980, one to two decades earlier than a temperature driven increase in active layer thickness. Comparison with monitored temperature and precipitation from a nearby climate station indicates that this change in peat surface moisture is related to June–September (JJAS) precipitation and that the increase in lake-water TOC concentration reflects an increase in total annual precipitation. A significant depletion in 13C of sediment organic matter in the early 1980s probably reflects the effect of a single or a few consecutive years with anomalously high summer precipitation, resulting in elevated DIC content of the lake water, predominantly originating from increased export and subsequent respiration of organic carbon from the mire. Based on these results, it was not possible to link proxy data obtained on peat and lake-sediment records directly to permafrost decay. Instead our data indicate that increased precipitation and anomalously high rainfall during summers had a significant impact on the mire and the adjacent lake ecosystem. We therefore propose that effects of increased precipitation should be considered when evaluating potential forcing mechanisms of recent changes in carbon cycling in the subarctic.
|
|
| 3. |
- Norkko, J., et al.
(författare)
-
A welcome can of worms? Hypoxia mitigation by an invasive species
- 2012
-
Ingår i: Global Change Biology. - : Wiley. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 18:2, s. 422-434
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Invasive species and bottom-water hypoxia both constitute major global threats to the diversity and integrity of marine ecosystems. These stressors may interact with unexpected consequences, as invasive species that require an initial environmental disturbance to become established can subsequently become important drivers of ecological change. There is recent evidence that improved bottom-water oxygen conditions in coastal areas of the northern Baltic Sea coincide with increased abundances of the invasive polychaetes Marenzelleria spp. Using a reactive-transport model, we demonstrate that the long-term bioirrigation activities of dense Marenzelleria populations have a major impact on sedimentary phosphorus dynamics. This may facilitate the switch from a seasonally hypoxic system back to a normoxic system by reducing the potential for sediment-induced eutrophication in the upper water column. In contrast to short-term laboratory experiments, our simulations, which cover a 10-year period, show that Marenzelleria has the potential to enhance long-term phosphorus retention in muddy sediments. Over time bioirrigation leads to a substantial increase in the iron-bound phosphorus content of sediments while reducing the concentration of labile organic carbon. As surface sediments are maintained oxic, iron oxyhydroxides are able to persist and age into more refractory forms. The model illustrates mechanisms through which Marenzelleria can act as a driver of ecological change, although hypoxic disturbance or natural population declines in native species may be needed for them to initially become established. Invasive species are generally considered to have a negative impact; however, we show here that one of the main recent invaders in the Baltic Sea may provide important ecosystem services. This may be of particular importance in low-diversity systems, where disturbances may dramatically alter ecosystem services due to low functional redundancy. Thus, an environmental problem in one region may be either exacerbated or alleviated by a single species from another region, with potentially ecosystem-wide consequences.
|
|
| 4. |
- De Frenne, Pieter, et al.
(författare)
-
Temperature effects on forest herbs assessed by warming and transplant experiments along a latitudinal gradient
- 2011
-
Ingår i: Global Change Biology. - : Wiley. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 17:10, s. 3240-3253
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Slow-colonizing forest understorey plants are probably not able to rapidly adjust their distribution range following large-scale climate change. Therefore, the acclimation potential to climate change within their actual occupied habitats will likely be key for their short-and long-term persistence. We combined transplant experiments along a latitudinal gradient with open-top chambers to assess the effects of temperature on phenology, growth and reproductive performance of multiple populations of slow-colonizing understorey plants, using the spring flowering geophytic forb Anemone nemorosa and the early summer flowering grass Milium effusum as study species. In both species, emergence time and start of flowering clearly advanced with increasing temperatures. Vegetative growth (plant height, aboveground biomass) and reproductive success (seed mass, seed germination and germinable seed output) of A. nemorosa benefited from higher temperatures. Climate warming may thus increase future competitive ability and colonization rates of this species. Apart from the effects on phenology, growth and reproductive performance of M. effusum generally decreased when transplanted southwards (e. g., plant size and number of individuals decreased towards the south) and was probably more limited by light availability in the south. Specific leaf area of both species increased when transplanted southwards, but decreased with open-top chamber installation in A. nemorosa. In general, individuals of both species transplanted at the home site performed best, suggesting local adaptation. We conclude that contrasting understorey plants may display divergent plasticity in response to changing temperatures which may alter future understorey community dynamics.
|
|
| 5. |
- Hillebrand, Helmut, et al.
(författare)
-
Warming leads to higher species turnover in a coastal ecosystem
- 2010
-
Ingår i: Global Change Biology. - : Wiley. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 16:4, s. 1181-1193
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The responses of ecological communities and ecosystems to increased rates of environmental change will be strongly influenced by variation in the diversity of community composition. Yet, our understanding of how diversity is affected by rising temperatures is inconclusive and mainly based on indirect evidence or short-term experiments. In our study, we analyse the diversity and species turnover of benthic epilithic communities within the thermal flume of a nuclear power plant at the Swedish coast. This flume covers the range of predicted future temperature rises. Species composition was significantly different between control sites and sites with higher temperatures. We found that temperature had little effect on the number of species in three functional groups (macroinvertebrates, benthic diatoms, and macrophytes, which here comprise multicellular algae and macroscopic colonies of unicellular algae and cyanobacteria), neither at single sampling dates nor summed for the entire observation year. However, species turnover significantly increased with increasing temperature for diatoms, macrophytes and invertebrates. Different temperature regimes resulted in significantly different species composition and indicator species. Thus, increasing temperatures in the thermal flume increased temporal beta-diversity and decreased compositional stability of communities, although observed richness did not change at any point in time. We highlight the need to investigate the consequences of such declines in compositional stability for functional stability of ecosystem processes.
|
|
| 6. |
- Humborg, Cristoph, et al.
(författare)
-
CO2 supersaturation along the aquatic conduit in Swedish watersheds as constrained by terrestrial respiration, aquatic respiration and weathering
- 2010
-
Ingår i: Global Change Biology. - : Wiley. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 6:7, s. 1966-1978
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We tested the hypothesis that CO2 supersaturation along the aquatic conduit over Sweden can be explained by processes other than aquatic respiration. A first generalized-additive model (GAM) analysis evaluating the relationships between single water chemistry variables and pCO(2) in lakes and streams revealed that water chemistry variables typical for groundwater input, e.g., dissolved silicate (DSi) and Mg2+ had explanatory power similar to total organic carbon (TOC). Further GAM analyses on various lake size classes and stream orders corroborated the slightly higher explanatory power for DSi in lakes and Mg2+ for streams compared with TOC. Both DSi and TOC explained 22-46% of the pCO(2) variability in various lake classes (0.01-> 100 km2) and Mg2+ and TOC explained 11-41% of the pCO(2) variability in the various stream orders. This suggests that aquatic pCO(2) has a strong groundwater signature. Terrestrial respiration is a significant source of the observed supersaturation and we may assume that both terrestrial respiration and aquatic respiration contributed equally to pCO(2) efflux. pCO(2) and TOC concentrations decreased with lake size suggesting that the longer water residence time allow greater equilibration of CO2 with the atmosphere and in-lake mineralization of TOC. For streams, we observed a decreasing trend in pCO(2) with stream orders between 3 and 6. We calculated the total CO2 efflux from all Swedish lakes and streams to be 2.58 Tg C yr-1. Our analyses also demonstrated that 0.70 Tg C yr-1 are exported to the ocean by Swedish watersheds as HCO3- and CO(3)2- of which about 0.56 Tg C yr-1 is also a residual from terrestrial respiration and constitute a long-term sink for atmospheric CO2. Taking all dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) fluxes along the aquatic conduit into account will lower the estimated net ecosystem C exchange (NEE) by 2.02 Tg C yr-1, which corresponds to 10% of the NEE in Sweden.
|
|
| 7. |
- Lindegren, Martin, et al.
(författare)
-
Nutrient reduction and climate change cause a potential shift from pelagic to benthic pathways in a eutrophic marine ecosystem
- 2012
-
Ingår i: Global Change Biology. - : Wiley. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 18:12, s. 3491-3503
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The degree to which marine ecosystems may support the pelagic or benthic food chain has been shown to vary across natural and anthropogenic gradients for e.g., in temperature and nutrient availability. Moreover, such external forcing may not only affect the flux of organic matter but could trigger large and abrupt changes, i.e., trophic cascades and ecological regime shifts, which once having occurred may prove potentially irreversible. In this study, we investigate the state and regulatory pathways of the Kattegat; a eutrophied and heavily exploited marine ecosystem, specifically testing for the occurrence of regime shifts and the relative importance of multiple drivers, e.g., climate change, eutrophication and commercial fishing on ecosystem dynamics and trophic pathways. Using multivariate statistics and nonlinear regression on a comprehensive data set, covering abiotic factors and biotic variables across all trophic levels, we here propose a potential regime shift from pelagic to benthic regulatory pathways; a possible first sign of recovery from eutrophication likely triggered by drastic nutrient reductions (involving both nitrogen and phosphorus), in combination with climate-driven changes in local environmental conditions (e.g., temperature and oxygen concentrations).
|
|
| 8. |
- Martens, C.S., et al.
(författare)
-
Radon fluxes in tropical forest ecosystems of Brazilian Amazonia: night-time CO2 net ecosystem exchange derived from radon and eddy covariance methods.
- 2004
-
Ingår i: Global Change Biology. - : Wiley. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 10:5, s. 618-629
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Radon-222 (Rn-222) is used as a transport tracer of forest canopy–atmosphere CO2 exchange in an old-growth, tropical rain forest site near km 67 of the Tapajós National Forest, Pará, Brazil. Initial results, from month-long periods at the end of the wet season (June–July) and the end of the dry season (November–December) in 2001, demonstrate the potential of new Rn measurement instruments and methods to quantify mass transport processes between forest canopies and the atmosphere. Gas exchange rates yield mean canopy air residence times ranging from minutes during turbulent daytime hours to greater than 12 h during calm nights. Rn is an effective tracer for net ecosystem exchange of CO2 (CO2 NEE) during calm, night-time hours when eddy covariance-based NEE measurements are less certain because of low atmospheric turbulence. Rn-derived night-time CO2 NEE (9.00±0.99 μmol m−2 s−1 in the wet season, 6.39±0.59 in the dry season) was significantly higher than raw uncorrected, eddy covariance-derived CO2 NEE (5.96±0.51 wet season, 5.57±0.53 dry season), but agrees with corrected eddy covariance results (8.65±1.07 wet season, 6.56±0.73 dry season) derived by filtering out lower NEE values obtained during calm periods using independent meteorological criteria. The Rn CO2 results suggest that uncorrected eddy covariance values underestimate night-time CO2 loss at this site. If generalizable to other sites, these observations indicate that previous reports of strong net CO2 uptake in Amazonian terra firme forest may be overestimated.
|
|
| 9. |
- Oulehle, Filip, et al.
(författare)
-
Major changes in forest carbon and nitrogen cycling caused by declining sulphur deposition
- 2011
-
Ingår i: Global Change Biology. - : Wiley. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 17:10, s. 3115-3129
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Sulphur (S) and nitrogen (N) deposition are important drivers of the terrestrial carbon (C) and N cycling. We analyzed changes in C and N pools in soil and tree biomass at a highly acidified spruce site in the Czech Republic during a 15 year period. Total S deposition decreased from 5 to 1.1 g m(-2) yr(-1) between 1995 and 2009, whereas bulk N deposition did not change. Over the same period, C and N pools in the Oa horizon declined by 116 g C and 4.2 g N m(-2) yr(-1), a total decrease of 47% and 42%, respectively. This loss of C and N probably originated from organic matter (OM) that had accumulated during the period of high acid deposition when litter decomposition was suppressed. The loss of OM from the Oa horizon coincided with a substantial leaching (1.3 g N m(-2) yr(-1) at 90 cm) in the 1990s to almost no leaching (<0.02 g N m(-2) yr(-1)) since 2006. Forest floor net N mineralization also decreased. This had consequences for spruce needle N concentration (from 17.1 to 11.4 mg kg(-1) in current needles), an increase in litterfall C/N ratio (from 51 to 63), and a significant increase in the Oi + Oe horizon C/N ratio (from 23.4 to 27.3) between 1994 and 2009/2010. Higher forest growth and lower canopy defoliation was observed in the 2000s compared to the 1990s. Our results demonstrate that reducing S deposition has had a profound impact on forest organic matter cycling, leading to a reversal of historic ecosystem N enrichment, cessation of nitrate leaching, and a major loss of accumulated organic soil C and N stocks. These results have major implications for our understanding of the controls on both N saturation and C sequestration in forests, and other ecosystems, subjected to current or historic S deposition.
|
|
| 10. |
- Peters, W., et al.
(författare)
-
Seven years of recent European net terrestrial carbon dioxide exchange constrained by atmospheric observations
- 2010
-
Ingår i: Global Change Biology. - : Wiley. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 16:4, s. 1317-1337
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We present an estimate of net ecosystem exchange (NEE) of CO2 in Europe for the years 2001-2007. It is derived with a data assimilation that uses a large set of atmospheric CO2 mole fraction observations (similar to 70 000) to guide relatively simple descriptions of terrestrial and oceanic net exchange, while fossil fuel and fire emissions are prescribed. Weekly terrestrial sources and sinks are optimized (i.e., a flux inversion) for a set of 18 large ecosystems across Europe in which prescribed climate, weather, and surface characteristics introduce finer scale gradients. We find that the terrestrial biosphere in Europe absorbed a net average of -165 Tg C yr-1 over the period considered. This uptake is predominantly in non-EU countries, and is found in the northern coniferous (-94 Tg C yr-1) and mixed forests (-30 Tg C yr-1) as well as the forest/field complexes of eastern Europe (-85 Tg C yr-1). An optimistic uncertainty estimate derived using three biosphere models suggests the uptake to be in a range of -122 to -258 Tg C yr-1, while a more conservative estimate derived from the a-posteriori covariance estimates is -165 +/- 437 Tg C yr-1. Note, however, that uncertainties are hard to estimate given the nature of the system and are likely to be significantly larger than this. Interannual variability in NEE includes a reduction in uptake due to the 2003 drought followed by 3 years of more than average uptake. The largest anomaly of NEE occurred in 2005 concurrent with increased seasonal cycles of observed CO2. We speculate these changes to result from the strong negative phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation in 2005 that lead to favorable summer growth conditions, and altered horizontal and vertical mixing in the atmosphere. All our results are available through http://www.carbontracker.eu.
|
|
