Decadal and long-term boreal soil carbon and nitrogen sequestration rates
across a variety of ecosystems

Manies, Kristen L.; Harden, Jennifer W.; Fuller, Christopher C.; Turetsky, Merritt R.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-13-4315-2016

Articles | Volume 13, issue 15

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-13-4315-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-13-4315-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 13, issue 15

Research article

|

01 Aug 2016

Research article |

| 01 Aug 2016

Decadal and long-term boreal soil carbon and nitrogen sequestration rates across a variety of ecosystems

Kristen L. Manies, Jennifer W. Harden, Christopher C. Fuller, and Merritt R. Turetsky

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Final revised paper (published on 01 Aug 2016)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 27 Jan 2016)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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RC1: 'Referee comment', Anonymous Referee #1, 22 Feb 2016
- AC1: 'Response to reviewer 1 comments', Kristen Manies, 21 Apr 2016
RC2: 'Review of "Temporal variation in carbon and nitrogen sequestration rates in boreal soils across a variety of ecosystems" by Manies et al.', Maarten Braakhekke, 22 Mar 2016
- AC2: 'Response to reviewer 2 comments', Kristen Manies, 21 Apr 2016
AC3: 'Revised manuscript', Kristen Manies, 21 Apr 2016
AC4: 'Revised manuscript #2', Kristen Manies, 05 May 2016

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (21 Apr 2016) by Sönke Zaehle

AR by Kristen Manies on behalf of the Authors (20 May 2016) Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (30 May 2016) by Sönke Zaehle

RR by F. Stuart Chapin (04 Jul 2016)

RR by Anonymous Referee #4 (07 Jul 2016)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Here, the authors use 210Pb profiles and radiocarbon measures of macrofossils to estimate rates of peat organic carbon accrual in five distinct ecosystems encompassing a gradient in vegetation stature and permafrost extent in interior Alaska. The authors couched analyses of C accumulation rates in two time scales, decadal (< 60 years) and “long term” (780-1400 years), and present these accumulation rates in the context of a number of other studies, which investigated accumulation rates spanning a few years to nearly 10,000 years. An interesting finding of this work is that accumulation rates don’t vary appreciably on decadal time scales across very diverse vegetation assemblages. However, the rich fen ecosystem exhibited very high C accumulation rates over the long term. Moreover, this work presents N stock and accumulation rate data, which are relatively unique. N accumulation rates are also relatively high in the rich fen. Taken together, these data provide context for more contemporary rates of C cycling, and complement flux data (eddy covariance and chamber based). The methods seem sound to this reviewer, and what caveats there are with interpretation (such as with vertical movement of Pb) are clearly described. I feel the writing is concise and the figures depict the data well. I offer only minor comments by line number, below, and hope these are helpful in minor revision.

Line 65: The authors mean that higher lignin:N ratio has lower decomposition, correct?
Line 195: It seems that it would be appropriate to mention the stand age of the black spruce, which would also indicate the time since stand replacing fire.
Line 320: Was there any charcoal evidence possibly indicating fires that could help corroborate this? A lack of any charcoal in the core descriptions from the rich fen would show this clearly.
Line 335: “…findings may be more indicative…” [remove “are”]
Line 337: “…This variability is likely do [to] microsite variability…”
Figure 1: Perhaps this would depict the comparison better as an xy plot (Pb vs. C) with correlation coefficients?

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ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (07 Jul 2016) by Sönke Zaehle

AR by Kristen Manies on behalf of the Authors (15 Jul 2016) Author's response Manuscript

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Short summary

Boreal soils are important to the global C cycle. We need to understand what controls how C accumulates and is lost from this soil. To help we examined C & N accumulation rates for five boreal ecosystems. Most ecosystems were similar. But the rich fen had higher long-term C & N accumulation rates, likely due to differences in nutrient cycling & because it burns less. Therefore, shifts among ecosystems will not change regional C & N dynamics much, unless there is a shift to or from a rich fen.