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Permafrost degradation is delivering bioavailable dissolved organic matter (DOM) and inorganic nutrients to surface water networks. While these permafrost subsidies represent a small portion of total fluvial DOM and nutrient fluxes, they could influence food webs and net ecosystem carbon balance via priming or nutrient effects that destabilize background DOM. We investigated how addition of biolabile carbon (acetate) and inorganic nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) affected DOM decomposition with 28‐day incubations. We incubated late‐summer stream water from 23 locations nested in seven northern or high‐altitude regions in Asia, Europe, and North America. DOM loss ranged from 3% to 52%, showing a variety of longitudinal patterns within stream networks. DOM optical properties varied widely, but DOM showed compositional similarity based on Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (FT‐ICR MS) analysis. Addition of acetate and nutrients decreased bulk DOM mineralization (i.e., negative priming), with more negative effects on biodegradable DOM but neutral or positive effects on stable DOM. Unexpectedly, acetate and nutrients triggered breakdown of colored DOM (CDOM), with median decreases of 1.6% in the control and 22% in the amended treatment. Additionally, the uptake of added acetate was strongly limited by nutrient availability across sites. These findings suggest that biolabile DOM and nutrients released from degrading permafrost may decrease background DOM mineralization but alter stoichiometry and light conditions in receiving waterbodies. We conclude that priming and nutrient effects are coupled in northern aquatic ecosystems and that quantifying two‐way interactions between DOM properties and environmental conditions could resolve conflicting observations about the drivers of DOM in permafrost zone waterways., Key Points Dissolved organic matter (DOM) from diverse circumpolar regions showed compositional and optical commonalitiesAdded acetate and nutrients suppressed background DOM degradation but accelerated colored DOM breakdownDisconnect between DOM composition and function indicates intrinsic and extrinsic conditions interact to regulate DOM dynamics

Woody residence time (τw) is an important parameter that expresses the balance between mature forest recruitment/growth and mortality. Using field data collected from the literature, this study explored the global forest τw and investigated its influence on model simulations of aboveground biomass (AGB) at a global scale. Specifically, τw was found to be related to forest age, annual temperature, and precipitation at a global scale, but its determinants were different among various plant function types. The estimated global forest τw based on the filed data showed large spatial heterogeneity, which plays an important role in model simulation of AGB by a dynamic global vegetation model (DGVM). The τw could change the resulting AGB in tenfold based on a site-level test using the Monte Carlo method. At the global level, different parameterization schemes of the Integrated Biosphere Simulator using the estimated τw resulted in a twofold change in the AGB simulation for 2100. Our results highlight the influences of various biotic and abiotic variables on forest τw. The estimation of τw in our study may help improve the model simulations and reduce the parameter's uncertainty over the projection of future AGB in the current DGVM or Earth System Models. A clearer understanding of the responses of τw to climate change and the corresponding sophisticated description of forest growth/mortality in model structure is also needed for the improvement of carbon stock prediction in future studies.

Our knowledge of fundamental drivers of the temperature sensitivity (Q10) of soil carbon dioxide (CO2) release is crucial for improving the predictability of soil carbon dynamics in Earth System Models. However, patterns and determinants of Q10 over a broad geographic scale are not fully understood, especially in alpine ecosystems. Here, we address this issue by incubating surface soils (0-10 cm) obtained from 156 sites across Tibetan alpine grasslands. Q10 was estimated from the dynamics of the soil CO2 release rate under varying temperatures of 5-25 oC. Structure equation modeling was performed to evaluate the relative importance of substrate, environmental and microbial properties in regulating the soil CO2 release rate and Q10. Our results indicated that steppe soils had significantly lower CO2 release rates but higher Q10 than meadow soils. The combination of substrate properties and environmental variables could predict 52% of the variation in soil CO2 release rate across all grassland sites, and explained 37% and 58% of the variation in Q10 across the steppe and meadow sites, respectively. Of these, precipitation was the best predictor of soil CO2 release rate. Basal microbial respiration rate (B) was the most important predictor of Q10 in steppe soils, whereas soil pH outweighed B as the major regulator in meadow soils. These results demonstrate that carbon quality and environmental variables co-regulate Q10 across alpine ecosystems, implying that modelers can rely on the ‘carbon-quality temperature’ hypothesis for estimating apparent temperature sensitivities, but relevant environmental factors, especially soil pH, should be considered in higher-productivity alpine regions.

Forest ecosystems function as a significant carbon sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide. However, our understanding of global patterns of forest carbon fluxes remains controversial. Here we examined global patterns and environmental controls of forest carbon balance using biometric measurements derived from 243 sites and synthesized from 81 publications around the world. Our results showed that both production and respiration increased with mean annual temperature and exhibited unimodal patterns along a gradient of precipitation. However, net ecosystem production (NEP) initially increased and subsequently declined along gradients of both temperature and precipitation. Our results also indicated that ecosystem production increased during stand development but eventually leveled off, whereas respiration was significantly higher in mature and old forests than in young forests. The residual variation of carbon flux along climatic and age gradients might be explained by other factors such as atmospheric CO2 elevation and disturbances (e.g., forest fire, storm damage, and selective harvest). Heterotrophic respiration (Rh) was positively associated with net primary production (NPP), but the Rh-NPP relationship differed between natural and planted forests: Rh increased exponentially with NPP in natural forests but tended toward saturation with increased NPP in planted forests. Comparison of biometric measurements with eddy covariance observations revealed that ecosystem carbon balance derived from the latter generated higher overall NEP estimates. These results suggest that the eddy covariance observations may overestimate the strength of carbon sinks, and thus, biometric measurements need to be incorporated into global assessments of the forest carbon balance.

[1] As the largest carbon pool in the terrestrial biosphere, soil carbon stock consists of organic and inorganic components. However, previous studies dominantly concentrated on soil organic carbon (SOC) stock, and little is known about the magnitude and patterns of soil inorganic carbon (SIC). In this study, we evaluated the magnitude of SIC stock in the Tibetan alpine grasslands using data from 405 profiles surveyed from 135 sites across the plateau during 2001–2004. Kriging interpolation was conducted to interpolate site-level observations to the regional level. We also compared spatial and vertical distributions of SIC stock with the corresponding patterns of SOC stock in the Tibetan alpine grasslands. Our results showed that SIC stock in the top 1 meter in the Tibetan alpine grasslands was approximately 15.2 Pg C (1 Pg = 1015 g), with an average density (amount per area) of 13.46 kg C m−2. SIC density exhibited different spatial and vertical distributions in comparison with SOC density. Spatially, SIC density in the alpine steppe was larger than that in the alpine meadow, in contrast to SOC distribution. Vertically, SIC stock in the upper 30 and 50 cm accounted for 47.6% and 71.6%, respectively, of that in the upper 1 meter, with lower proportions than that of SOC stock in the same interval (67.8% and 83.3%). In total, SIC stock in the Tibetan alpine grasslands was about 2.1 times the corresponding SOC stock, accounting for 28.5% of the total SIC stock in China. These results highlight that SIC stock in the Tibetan grasslands could make a significant contribution to China's terrestrial carbon balance.