Knowledge transfer of climate-ecosystem-interactions between science and society — Introducing the Climate Whirl concept

Peer reviewe

Climatic controls on leaf litter decomposition across European forests and grasslands revealed by reciprocal litter transplantation experiments

Carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) cycling under future climate change is associated with large uncertainties in litter decomposition and the turnover of soil C and N. In addition, future conditions (especially altered precipitation regimes and warming) are expected to result in changes in vegetation composition, and accordingly in litter species and chemical composition, but it is unclear how such changes could potentially alter litter decomposition. Litter transplantation experiments were carried out across six European sites (four forests and two grasslands) spanning a large geographical and climatic gradient (5.6-11.4 degrees C in annual temperature 511-878mm in precipitation) to gain insight into the climatic controls on litter decomposition as well as the effect of litter origin and species. The decomposition k rates were overall higher in warmer and wetter sites than in colder and drier sites, and positively correlated with the litter total specific leaf area. Also, litter N content increased as less litter mass remained and decay went further. Surprisingly, this study demonstrates that climatic controls on litter decomposition are quantitatively more important than species or site of origin. Cumulative climatic variables, precipitation, soil water content and air temperature (ignoring days with air temperatures below zero degrees Celsius), were appropriate to predict the litter remaining mass during decomposition (M-r). M-r and cumulative air temperature were found to be the best predictors for litter carbon and nitrogen remaining during the decomposition. Using mean annual air temperature, precipitation, soil water content and litter total specific leaf area as parameters we were able to predict the annual decomposition rate (k) accurately.Peer reviewe

Carbon-nitrogen interactions in European forests and semi-natural vegetation - Part 1 : Fluxes and budgets of carbon, nitrogen and greenhouse gases from ecosystem monitoring and modelling

The impact of atmospheric reactive nitrogen (N-r) deposition on carbon (C) sequestration in soils and biomass of unfertilized, natural, semi-natural and forest ecosystems has been much debated. Many previous results of this dC/dN response were based on changes in carbon stocks from periodical soil and ecosystem inventories, associated with estimates of N-r deposition obtained from large-scale chemical transport models. This study and a companion paper (Flechard et al., 2020) strive to reduce uncertainties of N effects on C sequestration by linking multi-annual gross and net ecosystem productivity estimates from 40 eddy covariance flux towers across Europe to local measurement-based estimates of dry and wet N-r deposition from a dedicated collocated monitoring network. To identify possible ecological drivers and processes affecting the interplay between C and N-r inputs and losses, these data were also combined with in situ flux measurements of NO, N2O and CH4 fluxes; soil NO3- leaching sampling; and results of soil incubation experiments for N and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, as well as surveys of available data from online databases and from the literature, together with forest ecosystem (BAS-FOR) modelling. Multi-year averages of net ecosystem productivity (NEP) in forests ranged from -70 to 826 gCm(-2) yr(-1) at total wet + dry inorganic N-r deposition rates (N-dep) of 0.3 to 4.3 gNm(-2) yr(-1) and from -4 to 361 g Cm-2 yr(-1) at N-dep rates of 0.1 to 3.1 gNm(-2) yr(-1) in short semi-natural vegetation (moorlands, wetlands and unfertilized extensively managed grasslands). The GHG budgets of the forests were strongly dominated by CO2 exchange, while CH4 and N2O exchange comprised a larger proportion of the GHG balance in short semi-natural vegetation. Uncertainties in elemental budgets were much larger for nitrogen than carbon, especially at sites with elevated N-dep where N-r leaching losses were also very large, and compounded by the lack of reliable data on organic nitrogen and N-2 losses by denitrification. Nitrogen losses in the form of NO, N2O and especially NO3- were on average 27%(range 6 %-54 %) of N-dep at sites with N-dep 3 gNm(-2) yr(-1). Such large levels of N-r loss likely indicate that different stages of N saturation occurred at a number of sites. The joint analysis of the C and N budgets provided further hints that N saturation could be detected in altered patterns of forest growth. Net ecosystem productivity increased with N-r deposition up to 2-2.5 gNm(-2) yr(-1), with large scatter associated with a wide range in carbon sequestration efficiency (CSE, defined as the NEP/GPP ratio). At elevated N-dep levels (> 2.5 gNm(-2) yr(-1)), where inorganic N-r losses were also increasingly large, NEP levelled off and then decreased. The apparent increase in NEP at low to intermediate N-dep levels was partly the result of geographical cross-correlations between N-dep and climate, indicating that the actual mean dC/dN response at individual sites was significantly lower than would be suggested by a simple, straightforward regression of NEP vs. N-dep.Peer reviewe