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H2020Individual fellowship2016–2018

MicroPEAT · Microbial communities of Temperate, Artic and Tropical peatlands and their role in the response of carbon storage function to global change

Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Duration
2016-05-01 → 2018-04-30
EU contribution
€183,455
Participants
1
Scheme
MSCA-IF-EF-ST

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Results in brief

Microbial communities of Temperate, Artic and Tropical peatlands and their role in the response of carbon storage function to global change

The study of peatlands is of great relevance in the current changing world, they are known as critical carbon reservoirs and store about one third of terrestrial carbon. Carbon storage function is linked to slow degradation of organic material (carbon) by microbes (bacteria, fungi, archaea, and protozoa), due to restricted environmental conditions (low pH and oxygen levels, and high concentration of phenols). Carbon cycle in peatlands are characterised by low carbon dioxide release and methane production, both recognised as critical greenhouse gases. Consequently, changes in the carbon metabolism in peatlands might have important consequences at global scale, releasing huge amounts of carbon dioxide to atmosphere and exporting dissolved organic carbon (DOC) to running waters and lakes. The highest extensions of peatlands are in temperate countries, where most of the research has been focused, but they are broadly distributed with significant resources in the Arctic and Tropical regions. Through the MicroPEAT project, we aimed to assessing peatlands from a global scale and shedding some lights on many aspects of peatland ecology still unresolved. Specifically, we compared peat-associated microbes and microbial metabolism from three contrasting regions: Temperate, Arctic and Tropic (Fig. 1), and tested the response of microbial metabolism, CO2 and CH4 emissions, and DOC exportation to drought disturbance in peatlands from those contrasting regions. Overall, through MicroPEAT project we got a comparative view of Arctic, Tropical and Temperate peatlands, showing so far key differences in environmental conditions, microbial metabolism and the effect of drought of moss-dominated peatlands. Our results highlight peat bogs diversity despite of having similar plant cover and restricted conditions, and contribute with critical information for peatlands management at local, European and global perspective.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union

Project objective

The present proposal aim at understanding microbial role in peatland sensitivity to climate change at a Global Scale. Peatlands represent one of the most important terrestrial carbon pools, despite they only cover 3% of the earth’s surface they store one third of all terrestrial carbon. This ecosystem has shown to be sensitive to different disturbances in terms of their carbon storage capacity and it is expected a huge CO2 and CH4 release as well as an increase in dissolved organic carbon exportation to freshwater systems, due to climate change. Peatlands cover large extensions in arctic and temperate zones, but they are also present in tropical regions were their ecology and functioning is almost unknown. Due to the valuable peatland role as carbon sink there has been many intents to find out the effect of global change on their functioning, however we are still far to totally comprehend and predict this effect, existing important unsolved questions on the role of microbial decomposer communities (Fungi, Bacteria and Archaea), the structure-function relationship, and so far, none study has assessed the climate change impact at global scale. In order to fill these gaps I propose to survey the microbial communities in Arctic, Temperate and Tropical peatlands and test how differences in origin-legacy can drive peatlands sensitivity to drought events. The proposed methodology is an interdisciplinary approach (combining molecular thechniques, ecosystem measurements and biogeochemistry) with three big components: 1) initial field work study to systematically assess microbial communities from the 3 regions; 2) a microcosm experiment to test the effect of drought (water table reduction) on peatland functioning; 3) a secondment in a drinking water company to put into a management context the results, as these companies are interested in the by-product formation problem thanks to the DOC enhancing in water supplies due to the loss of peatlands storage capacity.

Original text from CORDIS.

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Data: CORDIS, © European Union