The Influence of Extreme Water Pulses on Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Soils

Abstract:

Anthropogenic activity increasing the amount of radiatively active gases, or Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) in the earth’s atmosphere has led to shifts in weather patterns. Climate models predict the occurrence of large storms may increase in frequency and intensity in the mid-Atlantic region. Knowing that extreme precipitation events are rare, testing the influence of large water pulses across different soil types within an ecosystem is challenging. Large additions of water could promote or inhibit microbial activity, and change soil chemistry within a few days. Rapid changes in soil moisture lead to shifts in the behavior of soils as either sinks or sources of several GHGs (i.e., CO₂, CH₄ and N₂O). Unfortunately, it is still unclear how rewetting events could impact the magnitude of GHG fluxes and how changing soil chemical parameters influence these responses. An experiment was designed to test the influence of extreme repeated water pulses on GHG fluxes from four different soils, representing key topographic locations within a watershed in the Piedmont region (i.e., forested upland, forested lowland, creek, wetland). Intact soil cores from these four soil types were kept under constant temperature (22^oC) and we measured their responses to extreme water pulses. We continuously (hourly resolution) measured CO₂, CH₄ and N₂O fluxes using a LI-8100A (Licor, Lincoln, NE) multiplexed system coupled to a Picarro G2508 (Picarro, Santa Clara, CA). Furthermore, we used a rhizolysimeter for porewater extraction to measure pH, redox, and water chemistry throughout the experiment. We hypothesized that repeated extreme water pulses would result in non-linear responses of GHG flux magnitudes and dynamics, and these dynamics would relate to changes in soil chemistry. We found that soil moisture alone could not explain the dynamics of GHG fluxes, but these extreme water pulses influenced the overall temporal patterns of all GHGs across all soil types. We also examined the 100 year global warming potential for each GHG, using IPCC values accounting for carbon-climate feedback. Upland and lowland soil samples contributed 40.93% and 55.21% of GHGs in CO₂ equivalent over the entire experiment respectively, while the creek and wetland soil samples contributed 2.31% and 1.55% of gas fluxes in CO₂ equivalent, respectively.