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Non-methane biogenic volatile organic compound emissions from boreal peatland microcosms under warming and water table drawdown

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Abstract

Boreal peatlands have significant emissions of non-methane biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs). Climate warming is expected to affect these ecosystems both directly, with increasing temperature, and indirectly, through water table drawdown following increased evapotranspiration. We assessed the combined effect of warming and water table drawdown on the BVOC emissions from boreal peatland microcosms. We also assessed the treatment effects on the BVOC emissions from the peat soil after the 7-week long experiment. Emissions of isoprene, monoterpenes, sesquiterpenes, other reactive VOCs and other VOCs were sampled using a conventional chamber technique, collected on adsorbent and analyzed by GC–MS. Carbon emitted as BVOCs was less than 1% of the CO2 uptake and up to 3% of CH4 emission. Water table drawdown surpassed the direct warming effect and significantly decreased the emissions of all BVOC groups. Only isoprene emission was significantly increased by warming, parallel to the increased leaf number of the dominant sedge Eriophorum vaginatum. BVOC emissions from peat soil were higher under the control and warming treatments than water table drawdown, suggesting an increased activity of anaerobic microbial community. Our results suggest that boreal peatlands could have concomitant negative and positive radiative forcing effects on climate warming following the effect of water table drawdown. The observed decrease in CH4 emission causes a negative radiative forcing while the increase in CO2 emission and decrease in reactive BVOC emissions, which could reduce the cooling effect induced by the lower formation rate of secondary organic aerosols, both contribute to increased radiative forcing.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Åsmund Rinnan for programming the in-house function used in the BVOC analyses, Susan Owen for her comments that improved this paper, Timo Oksanen for constructing the equipment, Juhani Tarhanen for assistance in the GC–MS analyses and the Finnish Forest Research Institute for letting us collect the microcosms on the bog. The study was financially supported by Emil Aaltonen Foundation, Academy of Finland (decisions 202300 and 200884) and The Danish Council for Independent Research | Natural Sciences. Research fellowships from FQRNT, North Savo Regional Fund of the Finnish Cultural Foundation and Ella and Georg Ehrnrooth Foundation were awarded to Patrick Faubert.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Science, University of Eastern Finland, PO Box 1627, 70211, Kuopio, Finland

    Patrick Faubert, Päivi Tiiva, Tchamga Achille Nakam, Jarmo K. Holopainen, Toini Holopainen & Riikka Rinnan

  2. Terrestrial Ecology Section, Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, Øster Farimagsgade 2D, 1353, Copenhagen K, Denmark

    Riikka Rinnan

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  1. Patrick Faubert
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  2. Päivi Tiiva
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  3. Tchamga Achille Nakam
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Correspondence to Patrick Faubert.

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10533_2011_9578_MOESM1_ESM.pdf

Electronic supplementary material: Electronic supplementary material associated with this article is available online. Table S1 Mean (±SE; n = 18) biogenic volatile organic compound (BVOC) emissions under control (C), water table drawdown (WT), warming (T) and combined treatments (T + WT) from boreal peatland microcosms during the 7-week long experiment. Compounds are ordered by their retention time. Table S2 Mean (±SE; n = 3) biogenic volatile organic compound (BVOC) emissions from the peat layer sampled at 2–10 cm depth after the 7-week long experiment with control (C), water table drawdown (WT), warming (T) and combined treatments (T + WT). Compounds are ordered by their retention time (PDF 71 kb)

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Faubert, P., Tiiva, P., Nakam, T.A. et al. Non-methane biogenic volatile organic compound emissions from boreal peatland microcosms under warming and water table drawdown. Biogeochemistry 106, 503–516 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10533-011-9578-y

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