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| Titel |
Carbon isotopes as indicators of peatland growth? |
| VerfasserIn |
Christine Alewell, Jan Paul Krüger, Pascal von Sengbusch, Sönke Szidat, Jens Leifeld |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2016
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
en
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 18 (2016) |
| Datensatznummer |
250124477
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| Publikation (Nr.) |
 EGU/EGU2016-3920.pdf |
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| Zusammenfassung |
| As undisturbed and/or growing peatlands store considerable amounts of carbon and are
unique in their biodiversity and species assemblage, the knowledge of the current status of
peatlands (growing with carbon sequestration, stagnating or degrading with carbon
emissions) is crucial for landscape management and nature conservation. However,
monitoring of peatland status requires long term measurements and is only feasible with
expert knowledge. The latter determination is increasingly impeded in a scientific
world, where taxonomic expert knowledge and funding of long term monitoring is
rare.
Stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes depth profiles in peatland soils have been shown to be
a useful tool to monitor the degradation of peatlands due to permafrost thawing in Northern
Sweden (Alewell et al., 2011; Krüger et al., 2014), drainage in Southern Finland (Krüger
et al., 2016) as well as land use intensification in Northern Germany (Krüger et
al., 2015). Here, we tackle the questions if we are able to differentiate between
growing and degrading peats with the use of a combination of carbon stable (δ13C)
and radiogenic isotope data (14C) with peat stratification information (degree of
humification and macroscopic plant remains). Results indicate that isotope data are a
useful tool to approximate peatland status, but that expert taxonomic knowledge
will be needed for the final conclusion on peatland growth. Thus, isotope tools
might be used for landscape screening to pin point sites for detailed taxonomic
monitoring. As the method remains qualitative future research at these sites will
need to integrate quantitative approaches to determine carbon loss or gain (soil C
balances by ash content or C accumulation methods by radiocarbon data; Krüger et al.,
2016).
Alewell, C., R. Giesler, J. Klaminder, J. Leifeld, and M. Rollog. 2011. Stable carbon
isotopes as indicators for micro-geomorphic changes in palsa peats. Biogeosciences, 8,
1769-1778.
Krüger, J. P., Leifeld, J., and Alewell, C. 2014. Degradation changes stable carbon isotope
depth profiles in palsa peatlands. Biogeosciences, 11, 3369–3380.
Krüger, J. P., Leifeld, J., Glatzel, S., Szidat, S., and Alewell, C. 2015: Biogeochemical
indicators of peatland degradation – a case study of a temperate bog in northern Germany,
Biogeosciences, 12, 2861-2871.
Krüger, J. P., Alewell, C., Minkkinen, K., Szidat, S., and Leifeld, J. 2016: Calculating
carbon changes in peat soils drained for forestry with four different profile-based methods
(under review). |
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