Plant species determine tidal wetland methane response to sea level rise

Mueller, Peter; Mozdzer, Thomas J.; Langley, J. Adam; Aoki, Lillian R.; Noyce, Genevieve L.; Megonigal, J. Patrick

doi:10.1038/s41467-020-18763-4

Cited by 35 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…alterni ora may also have been related to plant traits that regulate CH 4 emissions by in uencing the balance between CH 4 production and oxidation (Sutton-Grier and , Mueller et al 2020), which itself is in uenced by traits that affect CH 4 transport through plants (Komiya et al 2020). Mueller et al (2020) proposed that plant traits vary across species such that some push the balance between these opposing processes toward net CH 4 production while others favor net CH 4 oxidation. We hypothesize that among the dominant species present at the site, S. alterni ora favors net CH 4 production while J. roemerianus favors net CH 4 oxidation, and that the lower CH 4 emissions rates in the J. roemerianus strata may have been due to relatively high rates of root oxygen loss by J.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stratifying by Vegetation and Hydrology Improves Tidal Marsh Methane Emission Accounting

Derby¹,

Needelman²,

Roden³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Methane emissions must be directly measured or estimated using methods such as proxies when managing wetlands for greenhouse gas offset activities. Salinity is a useful proxy for tidal marsh CH4 emissions when comparing across a wide range of salinity regimes but does not adequately explain variation in brackish and freshwater regimes where variation in emissions is large. We sought to improve upon the salinity proxy in a marsh complex on Deal Island Peninsula, Maryland, USA by identifying four strata based on hydrology and plant community composition. Mean CH4 chamber-collected emissions measured as mg CH4 m-2 hr-1 ranked as S. alterniflora (1.2 ± 0.3) >> High-elevation J. roemerianus (0.4 ± 0.06) > Low-elevation J. roemerianus (0.3 ± 0.07) = S. patens (0.1 ± 0.01). Sulfate depletion generally reflected the same pattern with significantly greater in the S. alterniflora stratum (61 ± 4%) than in the S. patens stratum (1 ± 9%) with the J. roemerianus strata falling in between. We attribute the high CH4 emissions in the S. alterniflora stratum to sulfate depletion likely driven by limited connectivity to tidal waters. Low CH4 emissions in the S. patens stratum are attributed to lower water levels, higher levels of ferric iron, and shallow rooting depth. Moderate CH4 emissions from the J. roemerianus strata were likely due to plant traits that favor CH4 oxidation over CH4 production. We concluded that stratification by hydrology and plant community composition can be an effective proxy to estimate CH4 emissions at the site scale.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stratifying by Vegetation and Hydrology Improves Tidal Marsh Methane Emission Accounting

Derby¹,

Needelman²,

Roden³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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“…Methane (CH 4 ) is a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to 15 %-19 % of total greenhouse gas radiative forcing (IPCC, 2013) and has a sustained-flux global warming potential that is 45 times that of CO 2 on a 100-year timescale (Neubauer and Megonigal, 2015). Wetlands are the largest natural source of CH 4 to the atmosphere and were recently identified as the largest source of uncertainty in the global CH 4 budget (Saunois et al, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Root exudates can also decrease CH 4 oxidation by stimulating use of O 2 by other aerobic microbes (Lenzewski et al, 2018;Mueller et al, 2016). Consequently, wetland CH 4 emissions are strongly linked to a wide variety of plant traits that govern the supply of reductive (organic carbon) and oxidative (O 2 ) substrates to soils (Moor et al, 2017;Mueller et al, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The general lack of process data on wetland CH 4 cycling makes it difficult to forecast ecosystem responses to climate change. For example, the well-documented observation that warming increases wetland methane emissions can be either amplified or dampened depending on changes in plant activity (e.g., primary production) or plant traits (e.g., community composition) (Mueller et al, 2020). Vegetation composition has been shown to be a stronger control on CH 4 emissions than ∼ 1 • C of warming in northern peatlands (Ward et al, 2013), and Chen et al (2017) proposed that warming effects on plant functional types can drive C flux responses that cannot otherwise be explained by abiotic conditions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Biogeochemical and plant trait mechanisms drive enhanced methane emissions in response to whole-ecosystem warming

Noyce

Megonigal

2021

Biogeosciences

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Abstract. Climate warming perturbs ecosystem carbon (C) cycling, causing both positive and negative feedbacks on greenhouse gas emissions. In 2016, we began a tidal marsh field experiment in two vegetation communities to investigate the mechanisms by which whole-ecosystem warming alters C gain, via plant-driven sequestration in soils, and C loss, primarily via methane (CH4) emissions. Here, we report the results from the first 4 years. As expected, warming of 5.1 ∘C more than doubled CH4 emissions in both plant communities. We propose this was caused by a combination of four mechanisms: (i) a decrease in the proportion of CH4 consumed by CH4 oxidation, (ii) more C substrates available for methanogenesis, (iii) reduced competition between methanogens and sulfate-reducing bacteria, and (iv) indirect effects of plant traits. Plots dominated by Spartina patens consistently emitted more CH4 than plots dominated by Schoenoplectus americanus, indicating key differences in the roles these common wetland plants play in affecting anaerobic soil biogeochemistry and suggesting that plant composition can modulate coastal wetland responses to climate change.

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“…The specific production and emission mechanism may differ a lot between tidal and non-tidal wetlands. The first major reason for this is that the much higher sulfate concentrations in tidal wetlands allows sulfate-reducing bacteria to outcompete methanogenic communities for electron donors [13]. Thus, as a proxy for sulfate availability, sediment salinity is proved to be closely related with CH4 production in tidal wetlands [11,14].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Methane Emissions during the Tide Cycle of a Yangtze Estuary Salt Marsh

Wang

Chen

et al. 2021

Atmosphere

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: Methane (CH4) emissions from estuarine wetlands were proved to be influenced by tide movement and inundation conditions notably in many previous studies. Although there have been several researches focusing on the seasonal or annual CH4 emissions, the short-term CH4 emissions during the tide cycles were rarely studied up to now in this area. In order to investigate the CH4 emission pattern during a tide cycle in Yangtze Estuary salt marshes, frequent fixed-point observations of methane flux were carried out using the in-situ static closed chamber technique. The results indicated that the daily average CH4 fluxes varied from 0.68 mgCH4·m−2·h−1 to 4.22 mgCH4·m−2·h−1 with the average flux reaching 1.78 mgCH4·m−2·h−1 from small tide to spring tide in summer. CH4 fluxes did not show consistent variation with both tide levels and inundation time but increased steadily during almost the whole research period. By Pearson correlation analysis, CH4 fluxes were not correlated with both tide levels (R = −0.014, p = 0.979) and solar radiation (R = 0.024, p = 0.865), but significantly correlated with ambient temperature. It is temperature rather than the tide level mainly controlling CH4 emissions during the tide cycles. Besides, CH4 fluxes also showed no significant correlation with the underground pore-water CH4 concentrations, indicating that plant-mediated transport played a more important role in CH4 fluxes compared with its production and consumption.

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Plant species determine tidal wetland methane response to sea level rise

Cited by 35 publications

References 62 publications

Stratifying by Vegetation and Hydrology Improves Tidal Marsh Methane Emission Accounting

Stratifying by Vegetation and Hydrology Improves Tidal Marsh Methane Emission Accounting

Biogeochemical and plant trait mechanisms drive enhanced methane emissions in response to whole-ecosystem warming

Methane Emissions during the Tide Cycle of a Yangtze Estuary Salt Marsh

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