Grazing enhances carbon cycling but reduces methane emission during peak growing season in the Siberian Pleistocene Park tundra site

• Published in: Biogeosciences
• Main Authors: W. Fischer, C. K. Thomas, N. Zimov, M. Göckede
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Copernicus Publications 2022
• Subjects: Ecology; QH540-549.5; Life; QH501-531; Geology; QE1-996.5; Arctic; permafrost; Tundra; Siberia
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-19-1611-2022; https://doaj.org/article/09f2a98c7ef244f59dbbfcdf67114bc4

Large-herbivore grazing has been shown to substantially alter tundra soil and vegetation properties as well as carbon fluxes, yet observational evidence to quantify the impact of herbivore introduction into Arctic permafrost ecosystems remains sparse. In this study we investigated growing-season CO 2 and CH 4 fluxes with flux chambers on a former wet tussock tundra inside Pleistocene Park, a landscape experiment in northeast Siberia with a 22-year history of grazing. Reference data for an undisturbed system were collected on a nearby ungrazed tussock tundra. Linked to a reduction in soil moisture, topsoil temperatures at the grazed site reacted 1 order of magnitude faster to changes in air temperatures compared to the ungrazed site and were significantly higher, and the difference strongly decreased with depth. Overall, both GPP (gross primary productivity, i.e., CO 2 uptake by photosynthesis) and R eco (ecosystem respiration, i.e., CO 2 release from the ecosystem) were significantly higher at the grazed site with notable variations across plots at each site. The increases in CO 2 component fluxes largely compensated for each other, leaving NEE (net ecosystem exchange) similar across grazed and ungrazed sites for the observation period. Soil moisture and CH 4 fluxes at the grazed site decreased over the observation period, while in contrast the constantly waterlogged soils at the ungrazed site kept CH 4 fluxes at significantly higher levels. Our results indicate that grazing of large herbivores may promote topsoil warming and drying, in this way effectively accelerating CO 2 turnover while decreasing methane emissions in the summer months of peak ecosystem activity. Since we lack quantitative information on the pre-treatment status of the grazed ecosystem, however, these findings need to be considered qualitative trends for the peak growing season, and absolute differences between treatments are subject to elevated uncertainty. Moreover, our experiment did not include autumn and winter fluxes, and thus no ...