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The Difference in Light use Efficiency between an Abandoned Peatland Pasture and an Adjacent Boreal Bog in Western Newfoundland, Canada

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Abstract

Light use efficiency (LUE) is a critical parameter to estimate the gross primary production (GPP) for terrestrial ecosystems from remotely sensed data. Only a few studies have estimated the LUE for boreal peatlands and none has calculated the LUE for a drained boreal peatland due to the limited availability of direct measurement of GPP and absorbed photosynthetically active radiation (APAR), which are required to calculate the LUE. In this study, we used eddy covariance (EC) measurement of GPP and APAR at a drained peatland pasture and an adjacent boreal bog to calculate the LUE. The pasture had a significantly higher LUE (0.034 ± 0.0109 mol mol-1) than the bog (0.028 ± 0.098 mol mol-1). The LUE showed significant year-to-year variation at the pasture, but not at the bog. The LUE variation strongly correlated with air temperature and water table depth at both sites, but did not correlate well with vapor pressure deficit. This study indicates that agricultural drainage significantly alters the LUE of boreal peatlands and that the drained peatlands need to be considered separately in LUE-based models for northern peatlands. Moreover, a longer period of study is needed to fully understand the temporal dynamics of LUE in natural peatlands.

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Acknowledgments

This study was made possible by the support of the following funding to J. Wu: Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)-Discovery Grant, Canada Foundation for Innovation-John R. Evans Leaders Fund, Research & Development Corporation (RDC, NL)- Leverage R&D, RDC-Ignite R&D, RDC-RCRI (Regional Collaborative Research Initiative), Humber River Basin Research Initiative of NL, Vice-President Research Fund, Seed Bridge Fund of Memorial University, and the Graduate Student Stipend funding from the Institute for Biodiversity, Ecosystem Science, and Sustainability (IBES, NL). We would like to thank Dr. Muhammad Nadeem, Dr. Mumtaz Cheema, and Mr. Waqas Ali for their comments, and Ms. Beverly Young for her English editing on the first draft of this manuscript. The constructive comments from two anonymous reviewers significantly improved our manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Environment and Sustainability, School of Science and the Environment, Grenfell Campus, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Corner Brook, NL, A2H 5G4, Canada

    Jianghua Wu & Syed Shah Mohioudin Gillani

  2. Boreal Ecosystem and Agricultural Sciences, School of Science and the Environment, Grenfell Campus, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Corner Brook, NL, A2H 5G4, Canada

    Jianghua Wu & Syed Shah Mohioudin Gillani

  3. Graduate Program in Environmental Science, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, NL, A1C 5S7, Canada

    Jianghua Wu

  4. School of Geographic Sciences, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, 510631, China

    Mei Wang

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  1. Jianghua Wu
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Correspondence to Jianghua Wu.

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Wu, J., Gillani, S.S.M. & Wang, M. The Difference in Light use Efficiency between an Abandoned Peatland Pasture and an Adjacent Boreal Bog in Western Newfoundland, Canada . Wetlands 40, 733–743 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13157-019-01224-0

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