Greenhouse gas balance of a semi-natural peatbog in northern Scotland

Northern peatlands have been accumulating organic matter since the start of the Holocene, and are now a substantial store of terrestrial carbon. However, their current status as carbon sinks is less clear, because of the possible effects of climate change, air pollution, grazing and drainage etc., a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Environmental research letters 2015-09, Vol.10 (9), p.94019
Main Authors: Levy, P E, Gray, A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accumulation
Air pollution
Annual variations
Carbon
Carbon dioxide
carbon dioxide exchange
Carbon sinks
Climate change
Climate effects
CO2 flux
Estimates
flux
Fluxes
Greenhouse effect
Greenhouse gases
Holocene
methane
net ecosystem exchange
Organic matter
Peat
Peatlands
Pollution effects
Primary production
Terrestrial environments
Tundra
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Summary:Northern peatlands have been accumulating organic matter since the start of the Holocene, and are now a substantial store of terrestrial carbon. However, their current status as carbon sinks is less clear, because of the possible effects of climate change, air pollution, grazing and drainage etc., and the difficulties of accurate measurement with suitable time resolution. Such measurements are particularly lacking in the UK. Here, we present multi-year eddy covariance measurements of the carbon fluxes at a relatively undisturbed ombrotrophic blanket bog in the Flow Country of northern Scotland. The site consistently acted as a moderate sink for CO2 over all the measurement years (mean net ecosystem exchange (NEE) of −114 g C m−2 y−1), similar in magnitude to other measurements in the boreal and tundra zones, and rather higher than the existing measurements at other sites in the UK and Ireland. Generally, the NEE of CO2 was relatively insensitive to moderate inter-annual variations in weather. Non-CO2 losses comprised 11% of gross primary production, mainly from methane emissions. Accounting for these terms, the net ecosystem carbon balance was −50 g C-CO2 eq m−2 y−1. The contemporary carbon sink was larger than estimates from local peat cores, based on peat accumulation over the last several thousand years, but in the middle of the range of estimates which used spheroidal carbonaceous particles to estimate peat accumulation rates over the last century.
ISSN:1748-9326
1748-9326
DOI:10.1088/1748-9326/10/9/094019