Ideas and perspectives: Strengthening the biogeosciences in environmental research networks

Long-term environmental research networks are one approach to advancing local, regional, and global environmental science and education. A remarkable number and wide variety of environmental research networks operate around the world today. These are diverse in funding, infrastructure, motivating questions, scientific strengths, and the sciences that birthed and maintain the networks. Some networks have individual sites that were selected because they had produced invaluable long-term data, while other networks have new sites selected to span ecological gradients. However, all long-term environmental networks share two challenges. Networks must keep pace with scientific advances and interact with both the scientific community and society at large. If networks fall short of successfully addressing these challenges, they risk becoming irrelevant. The objective of this paper is to assert that the biogeosciences offer environmental research networks a number of opportunities to expand scientific impact and public engagement. We explore some of these opportunities with four networks: the International Long-Term Ecological Research Network programs (ILTERs), critical zone observatories (CZOs), Earth and ecological observatory networks (EONs), and the FLUXNET program of eddy flux sites. While these networks were founded and expanded by interdisciplinary scientists, the preponderance of expertise and funding has gravitated activities of ILTERs and EONs toward ecology and biology, CZOs toward the Earth sciences and geology, and FLUXNET toward ecophysiology and micrometeorology. Our point is not to homogenize networks, nor to diminish disciplinary science. Rather, we argue that by more fully incorporating the integration of biology and geology in long-term environmental research networks, scientists can better leverage network assets, keep pace with the ever-changing science of the environment, and engage with larger scientific and public audiences

Methane emissions and production potentials of forest swamp wetlands in the eastern Great Xing'An Mountains, Northeast China

Measurements of methane flux at a few inundated sites in China have been extrapolated to obtain estimates on a national scale. To enable those national estimates to be refined and to compare flux from geographically separated sites comprising the same wetland types, we used a closed chamber method to measure methane flux in uninundated Betula platyphylla-and Larix gmelinii-dominated peatlands in the Northeast China. Our measurements were taken from both vegetated and bare soil surfaces, and we compared flux with environmental measures including vegetation biomass, soil temperature and soil characteristics. We found that methane flux was low, and that there were no significant differences between wetland types, indicating that environmental influences were dominant. We found that flux was positively correlated to temperature in the surface layers of the soil, the above-ground biomass of the shrub and herb layers, total soil carbon and total soil nitrogen; and we suggest that emissions may be due to anaerobic microcosms in the surface layers. The methane production potentials of the soils were low and similar between both sites but inconsistent with the differences between fluxes, and inconsistent with production potentials and fluxes reported from the same wetland types elsewhere, indicating that there were subtle environmental differences between wetlands classed as being of the same type. Differences between fluxes in vegetated chambers with bare soil chambers were insignificant, indicating that no methane emission through aerenchyma occurred at our sites. We concluded that wetland type was not an accurate predictor of methane flux.Bing Yu, Philip Stott, Hongxian Yu, Xiaoyu L