Of all terrestrial ecosystems, peatlands store carbon most effectively in long-term scales of millennia. However, many peatlands have been drained for peat extraction or agricultural use. This converts peatlands from sinks to sources of carbon, causing approx. 5% of the anthropogenic greenhouse effect and additional negative effects on other ecosystem services. Rewetting peatlands can mitigate climate change and may be combined with management in the form of paludiculture. Rewetted peatlands, however, do not equal their pristine ancestors and their ecological functioning is not understood. This holds true especially for groundwater-fed fens. Their functioning results from manifold interactions and can only be understood following an integrative approach of many relevant fields of science, which we merge in the interdisciplinary project WETSCAPES. Here, we address interactions among water transport and chemistry, primary production, peat formation, matter transformation and transport, microbial community, and greenhouse gas exchange using state of the art methods. We record data on six study sites spread across three common fen types (Alder forest, percolation fen, and coastal fen), each in drained and rewetted states. First results revealed that indicators reflecting more long-term effects like vegetation and soil chemistry showed a stronger differentiation between drained and rewetted states than variables with a more immediate reaction to environmental change, like greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Variations in microbial community composition explained differences in soil chemical data as well as vegetation composition and GHG exchange. We show the importance of developing an integrative understanding of managed fen peatlands and their ecosystem functioning.
Drained peatlands are significant sources of the greenhouse gas (GHG) carbon dioxide. Rewetting is a proven strategy used to protect carbon stocks; however, it can lead to increased emissions of the potent GHG methane. The response to rewetting of soil microbiomes as drivers of these processes is poorly understood, as are the biotic and abiotic factors that control community composition. We analyzed the pro- and eukaryotic microbiomes of three contrasting pairs of minerotrophic fens subject to decade-long drainage and subsequent long-term rewetting. Abiotic soil properties including moisture, dissolved organic matter, methane fluxes, and ecosystem respiration rates were also determined. The composition of the microbiomes was fen-type-specific, but all rewetted sites showed higher abundances of anaerobic taxa compared to drained sites. Based on multi-variate statistics and network analyses, we identified soil moisture as a major driver of community composition. Furthermore, salinity drove the separation between coastal and freshwater fen communities. Methanogens were more than 10-fold more abundant in rewetted than in drained sites, while their abundance was lowest in the coastal fen, likely due to competition with sulfate reducers. The microbiome compositions were reflected in methane fluxes from the sites. Our results shed light on the factors that structure fen microbiomes via environmental filtering.
Drained peatlands are significant sources of the greenhouse gas (GHG) carbon dioxide. Rewetting is a proven strategy to protect carbon stocks; however, it can lead to increased emissions of the potent GHG methane. The response to rewetting of soil microbiomes as drivers of these processes is poorly understood, as are biotic and abiotic factors that control community composition.We analyzed the pro-and eukaryotic microbiomes of three contrasting pairs of minerotrophic fens subject to decade-long drainage and subsequent rewetting. Also, abiotic soil properties including moisture, dissolved organic matter, methane fluxes and ecosystem respiration rates.The composition of the microbiomes was fen-type-specific, but all rewetted sites showed higher abundance of anaerobic taxa compared to drained sites. Based on multi-variate statistics and network analyses we identified soil moisture as major driver of community composition. Furthermore, salinity drove the separation between coastal and freshwater fen communities. Methanogens were more than tenfold more abundant in rewetted than in drained sites, while their abundance was lowest in the coastal fen, likely due to competition with sulfate reducers. The microbiome compositions were reflected in methane fluxes from the sites. Our results shed light on the factors that structure fen microbiomes via environmental filtering. Figure 1: Overview of sampling sites. A: alder carr; P: percolation fen; C: coastal fen; D: drained; W: rewetted. Soil physico-chemical propertiesSoil moisture was measured gravimetrically by drying 2-3 g of soil over night at 90°C until mass constancy. Soil moisture is expressed as the percentage of lost water weight to wet soil weight. The potential soil pH was measured at room temperature with a digital pH meter (pH 540 GLP, WTW, Weilheim, Germany) in 0.01 M CaCl2 solution with a 1: 2.5 soil to solution ratio. Concentrations of total C, N and S were measured using a CNS analyzer (Vario MICRO cube -Elementar Analysensysteme GmbH Langenselbold, Germany). DOM was measured in soil extracts derived from mixing 3 g of previously frozen soil with 30 ml 0.1 M NaCl in 50 ml reaction tubes with subsequent shaking (vortex, 180 rpm) for 30 min. Extracts were filtered through 0.45 µ m (pore size) sodium acetate filters, which were prewashed with 50 µ l deionized H2O to remove soluble acetate. The concentrations and the composition of DOM based on size categories were determined using a size-exclusion chromatography (SEC) with organic carbon and organic nitrogen detection (LC-OCD-OND analyzer, DOC-Labor Huber, Karlsruhe, Germany) [25]. The DOM was classified into three major sub-categories: (i) 'biopolymers', i.e. non-humic high molecular weight substances (> 10 kDa) of hydrophilic character and no unsaturated structures like polysaccharides and proteins, (ii) aromatic 'humic or humic-like substances' including building blocks, and (iii) 'low molecular-weight substances' including low molecular weight acids and low molecular weight neutral substances. Fractions were...
The recently established phylogeny of amoA provides a finer resolution than previous studies, allowing clustering of AOA beyond the order level and thus revealing novel clades. While the 16S rRNA gene is mostly appreciated in microbiome studies, this novel phylogeny is in limited use.
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