Determining the meteorological forcing that affect seasonal and diurnal dynamics of respiration and GPP in a constructed urban wetland in Ohio
Abstract
Wetlands provide important ecosystem services, including CO2 sequestration, reduction of nutrient loads, flood mitigation and refuges for biodiversity, however, they also produce Methane, a very potent greenhouse gas. The sustainability of these wetlands is dependent on their potential benefits provided through their ecosystem services and their green-house gas budget. As recent concerns over green-house gas emissions are starting to conflict with the need for wetland restoration, it has become pivotal to assess the GHG budgets from temperate urban wetlands. We set up a meteorological station for continuous micro-meteorological and eddy-covariance flux measurements of CO2 and methane at the Olentangy River Wetland Research Park (ORWRP) in Ohio State University. A footprint model was used to decompose the measurement periods due to high spatial and temporal variation in carbon flux and methane emission rates across the different sub-habitats of the wetland ecosystem. We find a clear and typical seasonal pattern carbon flux with high uptake during the summer and emission during the winter. A clear daily pattern exists for carbon sequestration rates that peak in the early afternoon. However, respiration does not show strong and predictable daily patters and it is very poorly correlated with environmental drivers such as soil/water temperature. We also found that during long parts of the winter the wetland still acted as a sink for CO2, rather than as a source. We hypothesize that this is, in part, due to the anomalous warm winter, but suggest that wetlands may behave more like evergreen ecosystems.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2012
- Bibcode:
- 2012AGUFM.B11H..07B
- Keywords:
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- 0426 BIOGEOSCIENCES / Biosphere/atmosphere interactions;
- 0428 BIOGEOSCIENCES / Carbon cycling;
- 0497 BIOGEOSCIENCES / Wetlands