Abstract
Abstract. Drainage for forestry purposes increases the depth of the oxic peat layer and leads to increased growth of shrubs and trees. Concurrently, the production and uptake of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) change: due to the accelerated decomposition of peat in the presence of oxygen, drained peatlands are generally considered to lose peat carbon (C). We measured CO2 exchange with the eddy covariance (EC) method above a drained nutrient-poor peatland forest in southern Finland for 16 months in 2004–2005. The site, classified as a dwarf-shrub pine bog, had been ditched about 35 years earlier. CH4 and N2O fluxes were measured at 2–5-week intervals with the chamber technique. Drainage had resulted in a relatively little change in the water table level, being on average 40 cm below the ground in 2005. The annual net ecosystem exchange was −870 ± 100 g CO2 m−2 yr−1 in the calendar year 2005, indicating net CO2 uptake from the atmosphere. The site was a small sink of CH4 (−0.12 g CH4 m−2 yr−1) and a small source of N2O (0.10 g N2O m−2 yr−1). Photosynthesis was detected throughout the year when the air temperature exceeded −3 °C. As the annual accumulation of C in the above and below ground tree biomass (175 ± 35 g C m−2) was significantly lower than the accumulation observed by the flux measurement (240 ± 30 g C m−2), about 65 g C m−2 yr−1 was likely to have accumulated as organic matter into the peat soil. This is a higher average accumulation rate than previously reported for natural northern peatlands, and the first time C accumulation has been shown by EC measurements to occur in a forestry-drained peatland. Our results suggest that forestry-drainage may significantly increase the CO2 uptake rate of nutrient-poor peatland ecosystems.
Highlights
One-third of the European peat soil area is located in Finland (Montanarella et al, 2006), where more than half of the original wetland area of 100 000 km2 has been drained, mostly for forestry (Lappalainen, 1996)
This study presents the first year-round net ecosystem exchange (NEE) data measured on forestry-drained peatland and supports earlier results, obtained by measuring changes in the peat C store that demonstrated that nutrient-poor peatland forests may accumulate C at the same or even increased rates after drainage
The increase in tree biomass only explained about 70 % of the C sink
Summary
One-third of the European peat soil area is located in Finland (Montanarella et al, 2006), where more than half of the original wetland area of 100 000 km has been drained, mostly for forestry (Lappalainen, 1996). This constitutes 34 % of the global area of forestry-drained peatlands; the rest of the peatlands ditched to improve forest growth are located in Russia (26 %), Sweden (11 %), other Northern European countries (23 %), North America (3 %) and China (0.5 %) (Minkkinen et al, 2008). Direct measurements of net ecosystem exchange (NEE) on peatlands converted to agricultural use have shown high decomposition rates of peat and large C losses due to drainage (Lohila et al, 2004; Veenendaal et al, 2007). To our knowledge no NEE measurements including tree canopy have been made previously in forestry-drained peatlands without agricultural history
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