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Warming effects on carbon release in a permafrost area of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

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Abstract

The warming of permafrost soils and the resulting change in soil respiration (Rs) is one of the most uncertainties in research on global change. To better understand the effect of warming on permafrost soils and the feedback of Rs to climatic warming, a manipulative warming experiment was conducted with two warming levels (low- and high-level warming; increases of 1.88 °C (W1) and 3.19 °C (W2) in soil surface temperature, respectively) from year 2010 to 2011 using infrared heaters in inland area of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP). Warming significantly decreased the soil moisture at depths of 0–10 and 10–20 cm, but increased it at depths of 40–60 and 60–100 cm, most likely because of the permafrost melting. Both warming treatments delayed the onset of freezing and advanced the onset of thawing in the active layer of permafrost with a stronger effect observed in W2. Annual soil C release increased by 77.1 and 125.8 g C year−1 in the W1 and W2 treatments, respectively, which equated to an increase of 18 and 29 % compared with the control (C). The increase in Rs was higher in the thawing period than in the freezing period. The decrease in soil water content in the upper soil layer did not significantly inhibit Rs because warming extended the thawing period and increased the soil labile C. Our results indicate that permafrost soils will release more C to the atmosphere, even though surface soil moisture decreases in a warming climate in the dry alpine meadow in the QTP.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported financially by the “100-talent Program” of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and sponsored by the 2012 Shanghai Pujiang Program (12PJ1401400), Thousand Young Talents Program in China, and The Program for Professor of Special Appointment (Eastern Scholar) at Shanghai Institutions of Higher Learning. The authors are very grateful to Prof. Yongzhi Liu and all colleagues at Beilu River research station for providing the experimental site and their kind help with the filed experiments. The authors also thank Prof. Yiqi Luo and his lab members for their kind suggestions for the experiment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Desert and Desertification, Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 320 West Donggang Road, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Fei Peng, Xian Xue, Quangang You & Tao Wang

  2. Graduate School of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Yuquanlu, Beijing, 100049, China

    Quangang You

  3. Research Institute for the Changing Global Environment, Fudan University, 220 Handan Road, Shanghai, 200433, China

    Xuhui Zhou

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  1. Fei Peng
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  2. Xian Xue
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Correspondence to Fei Peng, Xian Xue or Tao Wang.

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Peng, F., Xue, X., You, Q. et al. Warming effects on carbon release in a permafrost area of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Environ Earth Sci 73, 57–66 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-014-3394-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-014-3394-3

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