Abstract
Abstract. Drained organic forest soils in boreal and temperate climate zones are believed to be significant sources of the greenhouse gases (GHGs) carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), but the annual fluxes are still highly uncertain. Drained organic soils exemplify systems where many studies are still carried out with relatively small resources, several methodologies and manually operated systems, which further involve different options for the detailed design of the measurement and data analysis protocols for deriving the annual flux. It would be beneficial to set certain guidelines for how to measure and report the data, so that data from individual studies could also be used in synthesis work based on data collation and modelling. Such synthesis work is necessary for deciphering general patterns and trends related to, e.g., site types, climate, and management, and the development of corresponding emission factors, i.e. estimates of the net annual soil GHG emission and removal, which can be used in GHG inventories. Development of specific emission factors also sets prerequisites for the background or environmental data to be reported in individual studies. We argue that wide applicability greatly increases the value of individual studies. An overall objective of this paper is to support future monitoring campaigns in obtaining high-value data. We analysed peer-reviewed publications presenting CO2, CH4 and N2O flux data for drained organic forest soils in boreal and temperate climate zones, focusing on data that have been used, or have the potential to be used, for estimating net annual soil GHG emissions and removals. We evaluated the methods used in data collection and identified major gaps in background or environmental data. Based on these, we formulated recommendations for future research.
Highlights
Organic soils contribute to the atmospheric greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations, as they can both remove and emit greenhouse gases (GHGs), and have globally extensive carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) stores (Post et al, 1982; FAO, 2012; IPCC, 2014; Oertel et al, 2016; Wilson et al, 2016)
Such synthesis work is necessary for deciphering general patterns and trends related to, e.g., site types, climate, and management, and the development of corresponding emission factors, i.e. estimates of the net annual soil GHG emission and removal, which can be used in GHG inventories
The drained organic forest soils of this region may act as significant sources of GHGs (Barthelmes et al, 2015), and their annual carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions and removals have to be reported in the national GHG inventories
Summary
Organic soils contribute to the atmospheric greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations, as they can both remove and emit GHGs, and have globally extensive carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) stores (Post et al, 1982; FAO, 2012; IPCC, 2014; Oertel et al, 2016; Wilson et al, 2016). The drained organic forest soils of this region may act as significant sources of GHGs (Barthelmes et al, 2015), and their annual carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions and removals have to be reported in the national GHG inventories. The high uncertainty underlines the need for improvement of GHG emission and removal estimation in countries with a high proportion of drained organic forest soils Both data collection and method development for reporting the anthropogenic emissions from drained organic soils have duly received increasing attention, with the aim to improve the accuracy of the emission estimates (e.g. IPCC, 2014; Oertel et al, 2016; Tubiello et al, 2016; Kasimir et al, 2018). Waterborne C losses will be assessed to a limited extent only, due to the scarcity of available data for drained organic forest soils and a recent review published on the subject (Evans et al, 2016)
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