Vegetation and microbes interact to preserve carbon in many wooded peatlands

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dc.contributor.authorWang, Hongjun
dc.contributor.authorTian, Jianqing
dc.contributor.authorChen, Huai
dc.contributor.authorHo, Mengchi
dc.contributor.authorVilgalys, Rytas
dc.contributor.authorBu, Zhao-Jun
dc.contributor.authorLiu, Xingzhong
dc.contributor.authorRichardson, Curtis J.
dc.date.accessioned2023-09-08T05:41:56Z
dc.date.available2023-09-08T05:41:56Z
dc.date.issued2021-03-26
dc.description© The Author(s) 2021. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Version of Scholarly Record of this Article is published in Communications Earth & Environment, 2021, available online at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-021-00136-4 . Keywords: biogeochemistry; climate sciences; ecology; microbiology; plant sciences.
dc.description.abstractPeatlands have persisted as massive carbon sinks over millennia, even during past periods of climate change. The commonly accepted theory of abiotic controls (mainly anoxia and low temperature) over carbon decomposition cannot fully explain how vast low-latitude shrub/tree dominated (wooded) peatlands consistently accrete peat under warm and seasonally unsaturated conditions. Here we show, by comparing the composition and ecological traits of microbes between Sphagnum- and shrub-dominated peatlands, that slow-growing microbes decisively dominate the studied shrub-dominated peatlands, concomitant with plant-induced increases in highly recalcitrant carbon and phenolics. The slow-growing microbes metabolize organic matter thirty times slower than the fast-growing microbes that dominate our Sphagnum-dominated site. We suggest that the high-phenolic shrub/tree induced shifts in microbial composition may compensate for positive effects of temperature and/or drought on metabolism over time in peatlands. This biotic self-sustaining process that modulates abiotic controls on carbon cycling may improve projections of long-term, climate-carbon feedbacks in peatlands.
dc.description.sponsorshipAcknowledgements: We would like to thank Drs. David J. Levy-Booth and William W. Mohn at University of British Columbia and Dr. Joel E. Kostka at Georgia Institute of Technology for sharing their published data, Dr. Xianyu Huang at China University of Geosciences for sample collection in Dajiuhu peatlands, Dr. William H. Schlesinger at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies for his detailed comments on experimental design and data interpretation, Dr. Jeff Chanton at Florida State University, Dr. Dorothy Peteet at Columbia University, Dr. Christopher W. Schadt at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Dr. Scott Neubauer at Virginia Commonwealth University, and Dr. Louis James Lamit at Syracuse University for their comments, Dr. Neal Flanagan for providing water levels, Belen de la Barrera for laboratory measurement, Dr. Randy Neighbarger for technical editing. US DOE Office of Science, Terrestrial Ecosystem Sciences (DE-SC0012272), Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences, CAS (QYZDB-SSW-DQC007), Jilin Provincial Science and Technology Development Project (Grant No. 20190101025JH), the Duke University Wetland Center Endowment, and China Scholarship provided financial support.
dc.identifier.citationWang, H., Tian, J., Chen, H. et al. Vegetation and microbes interact to preserve carbon in many wooded peatlands. Commun Earth Environ 2, 67 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-021-00136-4
dc.identifier.otherhttps://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-021-00136-4
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14096/412
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisherSpringer Nature
dc.titleVegetation and microbes interact to preserve carbon in many wooded peatlands
dc.typeArticle

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