Microbial community analyses inform geochemical reaction network models for predicting pathways of greenhouse gas production

• Published in: Frontiers in Earth Science
• Main Authors: Wilson, Rachel M., Neumann, Rebecca B., Crossen, Kelsey B., Raab, Nicole M., Hodgkins, Suzanne B., Saleska, Scott R., Bolduc, Ben, Woodcroft, Ben J., Tyson, Gene W., Chanton, Jeffrey P., Rich, Virginia I.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Frontiers Media SA 2019
• Subjects: palsa; permafrost
• Online Access: https://eprints.qut.edu.au/200765/

The mechanisms, pathways, and rates of CO 2 and CH 4 production are central to understanding carbon cycling and greenhouse gas flux in wetlands. Thawing permafrost regions are of particular interest because they are disproportionally affected by climate warming and store large reservoirs of organic C that may be readily converted to CO 2 and CH 4 upon thaw. This conversion is accomplished by a community of microorganisms interacting in complex ways to transform large organic compounds into fatty acids and ultimately CO 2 and CH 4 . While the central role of microbes in this process is well-known, geochemical rate models rarely integrate microbiological information. Herein, we expanded the geochemical rate model of Neumann et al., (2016, Biogeochemistry 127: 57–87) to incorporate a Bayesian probability analysis and applied the result to quantifying rates of CO 2 , CH 4 , and acetate production in closed-system incubations of peat collected from three habitats along a permafrost thaw gradient. The goals of this analysis were twofold. First, we integrated microbial community analyses with geochemical rate modeling by using microbial data to inform the best model choice among equally mathematically feasible model variants. Second, based on model results, we described changes in organic carbon transformation among habitats to understand the changing pathways of greenhouse gas production along the permafrost thaw gradient. We found that acetoclasty, hydrogenotrophy, CO 2 production, and homoacetogenesis were the important reactions in this system, with little evidence for anaerobic CH 4 oxidation. There was a distinct transition in the reactions across the thaw gradient. The collapsed palsa stage presents an initial disequilibrium where the abrupt (physically and temporally) change in elevation introduces freshly fixed carbon into anoxic conditions then fermentation products build up over time as the system transitions through the acid phase and electron acceptors are depleted. In the bog, fermentation slows, while ...