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Evaluations of Climate and Land Management Effects on Lake Carbon Cycling Need to Account for Temporal Variability in CO 2 Concentrations
Author(s) -
Klaus Marcus,
Seekell David A.,
Lidberg William,
Karlsson Jan
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
global biogeochemical cycles
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.512
H-Index - 187
eISSN - 1944-9224
pISSN - 0886-6236
DOI - 10.1029/2018gb005979
Subject(s) - environmental science , boreal , carbon cycle , dissolved organic carbon , cycling , climate change , hydrology (agriculture) , productivity , temperate climate , temporal scales , drainage basin , taiga , greenhouse gas , physical geography , atmospheric sciences , ecology , ecosystem , geography , forestry , geotechnical engineering , geology , biology , macroeconomics , engineering , cartography , economics
Carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) concentrations in lakes vary strongly over time. This variability is rarely captured by environmental monitoring but is crucial for accurately assessing the magnitude of lake CO 2 emissions. However, it is unknown to what extent temporal variability needs to be captured to understand important drivers of lake carbon cycling such as climate and land management. We used environmental monitoring data of Swedish forest lakes collected in autumn ( n = 439) and throughout the whole open water season ( n = 22) from a wet and a dry year to assess temporal variability in effects of climate and forestry on CO 2 concentrations across lakes. Effects differed depending on the season and year sampled. According to cross‐lake comparisons based on autumn data, CO 2 concentrations increased with annual mean air temperature (dry year) or catchment forest productivity (wet year) but were not related to colored dissolved organic matter concentrations. In contrast, open water‐season averaged CO 2 concentrations were similar across temperature and productivity gradients but increased with colored dissolved organic matter. These contradictions resulted from scale mismatches in input data, lead to weak explanatory power ( R 2 = 9–32%), and were consistent across published data from 79 temperate, boreal, and arctic lakes. In a global survey of 144 published studies, we identified a trade‐off between temporal and spatial coverage of CO 2 sampling. This trade‐off clearly determines which conclusions are drawn from landscape‐scale CO 2 assessments. Accurate evaluations of the effects of climate and land management require spatially and temporally representative data that can be provided by emerging sensor technologies and forms of collaborative sampling.