EGU21-2809, updated on 12 Apr 2021
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-2809
EGU General Assembly 2021
© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Short lived peaks of stem methane emissions in temperate black alder forest - irrelevant for ecosystem methane budgets?

Daniel Köhn, Anke Günther, and Gerald Jurasinski
Daniel Köhn et al.
  • University of Rostock, Landscape Ecology, Rostock, Germany (daniel.koehn@uni-rostock.de)

Tree stems can be a source of the greenhouse gas methane (CH4) and locally as regionally important to the overall GHG budget. Stem emissions even hold the potential of narrowing down knowledge gap in the global methane budget. However, assessments of the global importance of stem CH4 emissions are complicated by a lack of research and high variability between individual ecosystems. Here, we determined the contribution of emissions from stems of mature black alder (Alnus glutinosa (L.) Gaertn.) to overall CH4 exchange in two temperate peatlands. We measured emissions from stems and soils using closed chambers in a drained and an undrained alder forest over 2 years. Furthermore, we studied the importance of alder leaves as substrate for methanogenesis in an incubation experiment. Stem CH4 emissions at the undrained alder forest were very variable in time and only persisted for a few weeks during the year. Generally the drained alder forest did not soil nor stem CH4 emissions. Different upscaling approaches were assessed and all approaches showed that stem CH4 emissions contributed less than 0.3 % to the total ecosystem CH4 budget. However, stem CH4 seem to depend strongly on the hydrological regime and therefore vary strongly between ecosystems. Hence, every ecosystem must be consdidered attentively with respect to their stem CH4 emissions.

How to cite: Köhn, D., Günther, A., and Jurasinski, G.: Short lived peaks of stem methane emissions in temperate black alder forest - irrelevant for ecosystem methane budgets?, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-2809, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-2809, 2021.

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