Summer litter decomposition is moderated by scale-dependent microenvironmental variation in tundra ecosystems
Tundra soils are one of the world's largest organic carbon stores, yet this carbon is vulnerable to accelerated decomposition as climate warming progresses. The landscape-scale controls of litter decomposition are poorly understood in tundra ecosystems, which hinders our understanding of the gl...
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ftzenodo:oai:zenodo.org:8107221 2023-07-30T03:55:28+02:00 Summer litter decomposition is moderated by scale-dependent microenvironmental variation in tundra ecosystems Gallois, Elise 2023-07-03 https://zenodo.org/record/8107221 https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.1g1jwsv29 unknown https://ecoevorxiv.org/repository/view/3765/ https://zenodo.org https://zenodo.org/communities/dryad https://zenodo.org/record/8107221 https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.1g1jwsv29 oai:zenodo.org:8107221 info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode Decomposition Tundra tea bag index litter microclimate Temperature moisture Climate change ecosystem change carbon cycling info:eu-repo/semantics/other dataset 2023 ftzenodo https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.1g1jwsv29 2023-07-11T22:57:47Z Tundra soils are one of the world's largest organic carbon stores, yet this carbon is vulnerable to accelerated decomposition as climate warming progresses. The landscape-scale controls of litter decomposition are poorly understood in tundra ecosystems, which hinders our understanding of the global carbon cycle. We examined the extent to which the thermal sum of surface air temperature, soil moisture and permafrost thaw depth influenced litter mass loss and decomposition rates (k), and at which spatial thresholds an environmental variable becomes a reliable predictor of decomposition, using the Tea Bag Index protocol across a heterogeneous tundra landscape on Qikiqtaruk - Herschel Island, Yukon, Canada. We found greater green tea litter mass loss and faster decomposition rates (k) in wetter areas within the landscape, and to a lesser extent in areas with deeper permafrost active layer thickness and higher surface thermal sums. We also found higher decomposition rates (k) on north-facing relative to south-facing aspects at microsites that were wetter rather than warmer. Spatially heterogeneous belowground conditions (soil moisture and active layer depth) explained variation in decomposition metrics at local scales (< 50 m2) better than thermal sum. Surprisingly, there was no strong control of elevation or slope on litter decomposition. Our results reveal that there is considerable scale dependency in the environmental controls of tundra litter decomposition, with moisture playing a greater role than the thermal sum at < 50 m2 scales. Our findings highlight the importance and complexity of microenvironmental controls on litter decomposition in estimates of carbon cycling in a rapidly warming tundra biome. We used the 'brms' package (Bürkner, 2017) and weakly informative priors (half Student-t priors with 3 degrees of freedom) for all models, with two chains of 8000 iterations each and a warmup value of 2000. We conducted all analyses in R version 3.6.3. The code and data used for this study can be found at ... Dataset Active layer thickness Herschel Herschel Island permafrost Tundra Yukon Zenodo Yukon Canada Herschel Island ENVELOPE(-139.089,-139.089,69.583,69.583) |
institution |
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collection |
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op_collection_id |
ftzenodo |
language |
unknown |
topic |
Decomposition Tundra tea bag index litter microclimate Temperature moisture Climate change ecosystem change carbon cycling |
spellingShingle |
Decomposition Tundra tea bag index litter microclimate Temperature moisture Climate change ecosystem change carbon cycling Gallois, Elise Summer litter decomposition is moderated by scale-dependent microenvironmental variation in tundra ecosystems |
topic_facet |
Decomposition Tundra tea bag index litter microclimate Temperature moisture Climate change ecosystem change carbon cycling |
description |
Tundra soils are one of the world's largest organic carbon stores, yet this carbon is vulnerable to accelerated decomposition as climate warming progresses. The landscape-scale controls of litter decomposition are poorly understood in tundra ecosystems, which hinders our understanding of the global carbon cycle. We examined the extent to which the thermal sum of surface air temperature, soil moisture and permafrost thaw depth influenced litter mass loss and decomposition rates (k), and at which spatial thresholds an environmental variable becomes a reliable predictor of decomposition, using the Tea Bag Index protocol across a heterogeneous tundra landscape on Qikiqtaruk - Herschel Island, Yukon, Canada. We found greater green tea litter mass loss and faster decomposition rates (k) in wetter areas within the landscape, and to a lesser extent in areas with deeper permafrost active layer thickness and higher surface thermal sums. We also found higher decomposition rates (k) on north-facing relative to south-facing aspects at microsites that were wetter rather than warmer. Spatially heterogeneous belowground conditions (soil moisture and active layer depth) explained variation in decomposition metrics at local scales (< 50 m2) better than thermal sum. Surprisingly, there was no strong control of elevation or slope on litter decomposition. Our results reveal that there is considerable scale dependency in the environmental controls of tundra litter decomposition, with moisture playing a greater role than the thermal sum at < 50 m2 scales. Our findings highlight the importance and complexity of microenvironmental controls on litter decomposition in estimates of carbon cycling in a rapidly warming tundra biome. We used the 'brms' package (Bürkner, 2017) and weakly informative priors (half Student-t priors with 3 degrees of freedom) for all models, with two chains of 8000 iterations each and a warmup value of 2000. We conducted all analyses in R version 3.6.3. The code and data used for this study can be found at ... |
format |
Dataset |
author |
Gallois, Elise |
author_facet |
Gallois, Elise |
author_sort |
Gallois, Elise |
title |
Summer litter decomposition is moderated by scale-dependent microenvironmental variation in tundra ecosystems |
title_short |
Summer litter decomposition is moderated by scale-dependent microenvironmental variation in tundra ecosystems |
title_full |
Summer litter decomposition is moderated by scale-dependent microenvironmental variation in tundra ecosystems |
title_fullStr |
Summer litter decomposition is moderated by scale-dependent microenvironmental variation in tundra ecosystems |
title_full_unstemmed |
Summer litter decomposition is moderated by scale-dependent microenvironmental variation in tundra ecosystems |
title_sort |
summer litter decomposition is moderated by scale-dependent microenvironmental variation in tundra ecosystems |
publishDate |
2023 |
url |
https://zenodo.org/record/8107221 https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.1g1jwsv29 |
long_lat |
ENVELOPE(-139.089,-139.089,69.583,69.583) |
geographic |
Yukon Canada Herschel Island |
geographic_facet |
Yukon Canada Herschel Island |
genre |
Active layer thickness Herschel Herschel Island permafrost Tundra Yukon |
genre_facet |
Active layer thickness Herschel Herschel Island permafrost Tundra Yukon |
op_relation |
https://ecoevorxiv.org/repository/view/3765/ https://zenodo.org https://zenodo.org/communities/dryad https://zenodo.org/record/8107221 https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.1g1jwsv29 oai:zenodo.org:8107221 |
op_rights |
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.1g1jwsv29 |
_version_ |
1772813006300774400 |