Investigating effect of environmental controls on dynamics of CO2 budget in a subtropical estuarial marsh wetland ecosystem

Abstract

In this study, we quantified the ecosystem-scale CO _2 exchange of two different but typical low-latitude vegetation types, para grass and reed, in a subtropical wetland ecosystem by integrating flux observation with the parameterization of environmental variables. In addition, we explored how seasonal dynamics of environmental factors affected variations in CO _2 budget. The results suggest that gross primary production (GPP, in the order of 1700 gC m ^−2 yr ^−1 ) of CO _2 was higher in this site than in previous studies of northern peatlands and estuarial wetlands because of the direct effect of environmental factors. Temperature and radiation had a larger effect than water status (soil moisture content and vapor pressure deficit) on GPP for the two low-latitude ecosystems, which differ from the results for high-latitude regions. Environmental variables had a strong but different impact on the CO _2 budget for para grass and reed areas. This diversity led to different potential shifts and trends of biomass accumulation and distribution of these two typical low-latitude vegetation types under different scenarios of environmental change. The findings from this study can sufficiently provide quantitative understanding of CO _2 budgets in low-latitude wetlands.

Keywords

• subtropical wetland ecosystem
• carbon dynamics
• environmental controls
• eddy-covariance