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Effect of open water pools on ecosystem scale surface-atmosphere carbon dioxide exchange in a boreal peatland

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Abstract

Peatland carbon dioxide (CO2) exchange can vary spatially over a few meters because of the heterogeneity in plant communities, differing responses to environmental conditions, and the presence of pools in patterned peatlands. In contrast to the plant communities comprising a peatland’s vegetated surface, permanent pools that are characteristic of peatlands in temperate to subarctic regions are net sources of CO2 to the atmosphere. Measurements of net ecosystem CO2 exchange using the eddy covariance (EC) technique over peatlands without permanent pools do not show the smaller plant scale spatial heterogeneity in fluxes because the atmosphere mixes the variations in fluxes over the EC tower source area. However, if different vegetation communities and pools approach the spatial scale that they form a significant proportion of an EC tower’s source area, such as might be the case in peatlands with pools, they should be able to be discriminated if the surface fluxes by cover type are significantly different. In the present study, we evaluate if the observed variability in peatland surface CO2 exchange can be identified from 30-min net ecosystem CO2 exchange measurements using the proportion of the different plant communities or pools within the eddy covariance tower source area. Our results show that the variability in CO2 exchange at the local scale across the peatland surface has a measureable impact on the ecosystem level measurement, primarily when open water pools are present within the tower source area. Our results also suggest that large CO2 exchange rates measured above Sphagnum spp. hummocks with Picea mariana, combined with their large fractional contribution to the source area, counterbalanced the CO2 loss from the open water pools, explaining why the ecosystem as a whole was a net CO2 sink during the measurement period.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to acknowledge the financial support of the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada through an NSERC-CRD grant to MG and a Discovery Grant to IBS. LP was funded through fellowships from NSERC (PGSD), the McConnell Foundation and the McGill Graduate Excellence program. The authors would like to thank Manuel Helbig (Département de Géographie, Université de Montréal) for discussions leading to Fig. 3; Caitlin Watt and Mathias Messager (McGill) for the remote sensing analysis; Dr. O. Bergeron for invaluable Matlab assistance; Dr. J.L. Bubier (Mount Holyoke College) and Dr. T.R. Moore (McGill) for discussion and suggestions on specific aspects of the manuscript; Dr. A. Tremblay and J-L. Fréchette (Hydro Quebec) for technical support; and the field and lab assistance of H. Asnong, A. Lamalice, V. Lefrancois, J. Minville (UQAM); M.-C. Bonneville, M. Dalva, E. Christensen, S. Crombie, C. Lefrançois, C. Watt, R. Chen, F. Ferber (McGill).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Natural Resource Sciences, McGill University, Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, QC, Canada

    Luc Pelletier & Ian B. Strachan

  2. GEOTOP Research Center, Université du Québec à Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada

    Luc Pelletier & Michelle Garneau

  3. Global Environmental and Climate Change Centre, McGill University, Montréal, QC, Canada

    Ian B. Strachan & Nigel T. Roulet

  4. Department of Geography, McGill University, Montréal, QC, Canada

    Nigel T. Roulet

  5. Département de Géographie, Université du Québec à Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada

    Michelle Garneau

  6. Département de Géographie, Université de Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada

    Karoline Wischnewski

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  1. Luc Pelletier
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Correspondence to Luc Pelletier.

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Responsible Editor: R. Kelman Wieder.

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Pelletier, L., Strachan, I.B., Roulet, N.T. et al. Effect of open water pools on ecosystem scale surface-atmosphere carbon dioxide exchange in a boreal peatland. Biogeochemistry 124, 291–304 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10533-015-0098-z

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