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Lake sediments constitute an important compartment in the carbon cycle of lakes, by burying carbon over geological timescales and by production and emission of greenhouse gases. The degradation of organic carbon (OC) in lake sediments is linked to both temperature and oxygen (O2), but the interactivenature of this regulation has not been studied in lake sediments in a quantitative way. We present the first systematic investigation of the effects of temperature on the apparent respiratory quotient (RQ, i.e., the molar ratio between carbon dioxide (CO2) production and O2 consumption) in two contrasting lake sediments. Laboratory incubations of sediment cores of a humic lake and an eutrophic lake across a 1–21°C temperature gradient over 157 days revealed that both CO2 production and O2 consumption were positively, exponentially, and similarly dependent on temperature. The apparent RQ differed significantly between the lake sediments (0.63 ± 0.26 and 0.99 ± 0.28 in the humic and the eutrophic lake, respectively; mean ± SD) and was significantly and positively related to temperature. The O2 penetration depth into the sediment varied by a factor of 2 over the 1–21°C temperature range and was significantly, negatively, and similarly related to temperature in both lake sediments. Accordingly, increasing temperature may influence the overall extent of OC degradation in lake sediments by limiting O2 supply to aerobic microbial respiration to the topmost sediment layer, resulting in a concomitant shift to less effective anaerobic degradation pathways. This suggests that temperature may represent a key controlling factor of the OC burial efficiency in lake sediments.

Quantifying CO2 fluxes from lakes to the atmosphere is important for balancing regional and global-scale carbon budgets. CO2 emissions are estimated through statistical upscaling procedures that aggregate data from a large number of lakes. However, aggregation can bias flux estimates if the physical and chemical factors determining CO2 exchange between water and the atmosphere are not independent. We evaluated the magnitude of aggregation biases with moment expansions and pCO(2) data from 5140 Swedish lakes. The direction of the aggregation bias depends on lake size; mean flux was overestimated by 4% for small lakes (0.01-0.1 km(2)) but underestimated by 13% for large lakes (100-1000 km(2)). Simple covariance-based correction factors were generated to adjust for upscaling biases. These correction factors represent an easily interpretable and implemented approach to improving the accuracy of regional and global estimates of lake CO2 emissions.

Inland waters process large amounts of organic carbon, contributing to CO2 and CH4 emissions, as well as storing organic carbon (OC) over geological timescales. Recently, it has been shown that the magnitude of these processes is of global significance. It is therefore important to understand what regulates OC cycling in inland waters and how is that affected by climate change. This thesis investigates the constraints on microbial processing of sediment OC, as a key factor of the carbon cycling in boreal lakes. Sediment bacterial metabolism was primarily controlled by temperature but also regulated by OC quality/origin. Temperature sensitivity of sediment OC mineralization was similar in contrasting lakes and over long-term. Allochthonous OC had a strong constraining effect on sediment bacterial metabolism and biomass, with increasingly allochthonous sediments supporting decreasing bacterial metabolism and biomass. The bacterial biomass followed the same pattern as bacterial activity and was largely regulated by similar factors. The rapid turnover of bacterial biomass as well as the positive correlation between sediment mineralization and bacterial biomass suggest a limited effect of bacterial grazing. Regardless of the OC source, the sediment microbial community was more similar within season than within lakes. A comparison of data from numerous soils as well as sediments on the temperature response of OC mineralization showed higher temperature sensitivity of the sediment mineralization. Furthermore, the low rates of areal OC mineralization in sediments compared to soils suggest that lakes sediments are hotspots of OC sequestration. Increased sediment mineralization due to increase in temperature in epilimnetic sediments can significantly reduce OC burial in boreal lakes. An increase of temperature, as predicted for Northern latitudes, under different climate warming scenarios by the end of the twenty-first century, resulted in 4–27% decrease in lake sediment OC burial for the entire boreal zone.