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Response of Boreal Plant Communities and Forest Floor Carbon Fluxes to Experimental Nutrient Additions

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Abstract

High-latitude warming is increasing soil temperatures and driving permafrost thaw, potentially altering soil nutrient conditions by enhancing microbial mineralization and making nutrients from previously frozen soils accessible for plant and microbial use. Increases in soil nutrient concentrations may alter plant community processes and, consequently, carbon (C) fluxes. We conducted an experiment in a boreal permafrost peatland, monitoring forest floor C flux and functional traits of the entire moss and vascular plant communities to the addition of nutrients at 20 and 40 cm soil depths and under closed and open canopy conditions. Plant functional trait responses were investigated at both community level (using community-weighted means) and intraspecific scales. Using fertilizer additions, we emulated nutrient increases at different depths in the soil profile, replicated at high and low canopy cover sites to assess the influence of light availability. Our results demonstrate rapid responses of vascular plant community-level traits as well as ecosystem respiration and gross primary productivity to fertilization treatments under low canopy cover, suggesting an influence of local environmental variation. We found that moss community-level traits played a more important role in mediating C flux response to nutrient fertilization than vascular plants but led to little change in C sink–source dynamics. This provides insight into existing ambiguities of the response of boreal C fluxes to increased nutrient availability following soil warming and permafrost thaw: Local environmental conditions and moss community can strongly mediate the response, whereas vascular plant communities may play a more minor role. However, our results suggest that these changes may not alter overall C sink–source dynamics of peatlands in the near term.

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Data availability

Data are available at https://doi.org/10.5683/SP3/PVBG2S.

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Acknowledgements

Firstly, we thank the Dehcho First Nations for permitting access to their traditional lands for this research. We also gratefully acknowledge field and laboratory assistance from W. Manning, K. McDonald, H. Baehre, J. Rabley, K. Dearborn, and J. Paul. We thank T. Moore, G. Gosselin Hould, and M. Dalva for invaluable technical and logistical support and construction of flux chambers used in our study. We benefitted greatly from suggestions from C. Wallace, N. Day, J. Musetta-Lambert, and G. McNickle. This research was supported by many funding sources: NSERC PGS-D3 and Northern Scientific Training Program to KMS, NSERC Discovery and Northern Supplement funding and CFREF Global Water Futures (project Northern Water Futures) funding to JLB, NSERC CRD funding to W. Quinton, JLB, and OS, and Canada Foundation for Innovation funding awarded to P. Marsh, JLB and OS. OS and JLB were both supported by the Canada Research Chairs program. CV was supported by the Academy of Finland project MUFFIN (no. 332196). Logistical support was provided by the Wilfrid Laurier University – Government of the Northwest Territories Partnership, as well as the Scotty Creek Research Station. Our research was approved by the Aurora Research Institute (License #16431).

Author information

Author notes

  1. Katherine M. Standen

    Present address: Department of Plant Sciences, University of Saskatchewan, 51 Campus Drive, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

  2. The study was designed by KMS, JLB, and OS. KMS and JLB performed the research. Analysis of data was by KMS, CV, and JLB. CV and OS contributed to methods and models used. The paper was written by KMS and AES, with support from JLB, CV, and OS on revisions.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Wilfrid Laurier University, 75 University Ave W, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

    Katherine M. Standen, Anastasia E. Sniderhan & Jennifer L. Baltzer

  2. Département de Géographie, Universite de Montreal, 1375 Avenue Thérèse-Lavoie-Roux, Montréal, Quebec, H2V 0B3, Canada

    Oliver Sonnentag & Carolina Voigt

  3. Department of Soil Science, Universität Hamburg, 20146, Hamburg, Germany

    Carolina Voigt

Authors
  1. Katherine M. Standen
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  2. Anastasia E. Sniderhan
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  3. Oliver Sonnentag
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  4. Carolina Voigt
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  5. Jennifer L. Baltzer
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Contributions

The study was designed by KMS, JLB, and OS. KMS and JLB performed the research. Analysis of data was performed by KMS, CV, and JLB. CV and OS contributed to methods and models used. The paper was written by KMS and AES, with support from JLB, CV, and OS on revisions.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jennifer L. Baltzer.

Supplementary Information

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Standen, K.M., Sniderhan, A.E., Sonnentag, O. et al. Response of Boreal Plant Communities and Forest Floor Carbon Fluxes to Experimental Nutrient Additions. Ecosystems 27, 462–478 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-023-00899-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-023-00899-1

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