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The uncertain climate footprint of wetlands under human pressure

2015; National Academy of Sciences; Volume: 112; Issue: 15 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1073/pnas.1416267112

1091-6490

Ana Maria Roxana Petrescu, Annalea Lohila, Juha‐Pekka Tuovinen, Dennis Baldocchi, Ankur R. Desai, Nigel T. Roulet, Timo Vesala, A. J. Dolman, Walter C. Oechel, Barbara Marcolla, Thomas Friborg, Janne Rinne, Jaclyn Hatala Matthes, Lutz Merbold, Ana Meijide, Gerard Kiely, Matteo Sottocornola, Torsten Sachs, Donatella Zona, Andrej Varlagin, Derrick Y.F. Lai, Elmar Veenendaal, Frans‐Jan W. Parmentier, Ute Skiba, Magnus Lund, A. Hensen, J. van Huissteden, Lawrence B. Flanagan, Narasinha Shurpali, Thomas Grünwald, Elyn Humphreys, M. Jackowicz-Korczyński, Mika Aurela, Tuomas Laurila, C. Grüning, C. Corradi, A. P. Schrier‐Uijl, Torben R. Christensen, Mikkel P. Tamstorf, Mikhail Mastepanov, Pertti J. Martikainen, Shashi B. Verma, Christian Bernhofer, Alessandro Cescatti,

Climate variability and models

Significance Wetlands are unique ecosystems because they are in general sinks for carbon dioxide and sources of methane. Their climate footprint therefore depends on the relative sign and magnitude of the land–atmosphere exchange of these two major greenhouse gases. This work presents a synthesis of simultaneous measurements of carbon dioxide and methane fluxes to assess the radiative forcing of natural wetlands converted to agricultural or forested land. The net climate impact of wetlands is strongly dependent on whether they are natural or managed. Here we show that the conversion of natural wetlands produces a significant increase of the atmospheric radiative forcing. The findings suggest that management plans for these complex ecosystems should carefully account for the potential biogeochemical effects on climate.