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Carbon Accumulation in Freshwater Marsh Soils: a Synthesis for Temperate North America

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Abstract

Freshwater marshes are prevalent in North America, yet their soil carbon stocks remain poorly quantified. To better understand these stocks, and rates of carbon accumulation over short and long timescales, we synthesize available data on soil properties and rates of carbon accumulation in freshwater marshes in the temperate region of North America. Our findings suggest that freshwater marshes are not defined consistently, and that wetland classification schemes may undervalue presumed carbon stocks in freshwater marsh soils. Rates of carbon accumulation in freshwater marshes are often measured over recent time scales (last 50–100 years); these short-term rates are on average (± SD) 155 ± 74 g C m−2 yr−1 in temperate North America. Long-term rates of carbon accumulation (measured over centuries and millennia) are on average 51 ± 38 g C m−2 yr−1 yet infrequently measured. Our synthesis of rates of carbon accumulation and vertical accretion, bulk densities, and organic carbon contents suggests that freshwater marshes are accumulating carbon at comparable rates to salt marshes over short timescales and temperate peatlands over longer timescales. These timescales need to be clearly defined in order to improve estimates of the capacity for freshwater marshes to be net carbon sinks presently and in the future.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge scholarships (to A.L.) and grants (to S.F.) from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada in support of this research. We thank Brian Tangen and Sheel Bansal for supplying and guiding us through the U.S. Geological Survey’s publicly-available data set of soil properties of wetlands in the U.S. Prairie Pothole Region, and we thank Judy Drexler and Pascal Badiou for helpful discussions. In addition, we thank two anonymous reviewers for insightful comments which improved the paper.

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  1. Department of Geography & Planning, University of Toronto, 100 St. George Street, Toronto, ON, M5S 3G3, Canada

    Amanda L. Loder & Sarah A. Finkelstein

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  1. Amanda L. Loder
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  2. Sarah A. Finkelstein
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Correspondence to Amanda L. Loder.

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Loder, A.L., Finkelstein, S.A. Carbon Accumulation in Freshwater Marsh Soils: a Synthesis for Temperate North America. Wetlands 40, 1173–1187 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13157-019-01264-6

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