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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 ...

Large carbon dioxide amounts are released to the atmosphere during organic matter decomposition. Yet the large-scale and long-term regulation of this critical process in global carbon cycling by litter chemistry and climate remains poorly understood. We used reactivity continuum (RC) modeling to analyze the decadal data set of the “Long-term Intersite Decomposition Experiment,” in which fine litter and wood decomposition was studied in eight biome types (224 time series). In 32 and 46% of all sites the litter content of the acid-unhydrolyzable residue (AUR, formerly referred to as lignin) and the AUR/nitrogen ratio, respectively, retarded initial decomposition rates. This initial rate-retarding effect generally disappeared within the first year of decomposition, and rate-stimulating effects of nutrients and a rate-retarding effect of the carbon/nitrogen ratio became more prevalent. For needles and leaves/grasses, the influence of climate on decomposition decreased over time. For fine roots, the climatic influence was initially smaller but increased toward later-stage decomposition. The climate decomposition index was the strongest climatic predictor of decomposition. The similar variability in initial decomposition rates across litter categories as across biome types suggested that future changes in decomposition may be dominated by warming-induced changes in plant community composition. In general, the RC model parameters successfully predicted independent decomposition data for the different litter-biome combinations (196 time series). We argue that parameterization of large-scale decomposition models with RC model parameters, as opposed to the currently common discrete multiexponential models, could significantly improve their mechanistic foundation and predictive accuracy across climate zones and litter categories.

Temperature alone explains a great amount of variation in sediment organic carbon (OC) mineralization. Studies on decomposition of soil OC suggest that (1) temperature sensitivity differs between the fast and slowly decomposition OC and (2) over time, decreasing soil respiration is coupled with increase in temperature sensitivity. In lakes, autochthonous and allochthonous OC sources are generally regarded as fast and slowly decomposing OC, respectively. Lake sediments with different contributions of allochthonous and autochthonous components, however, showed similar temperature sensitivity in short-term incubation experiments. Whether the mineralization of OC in lake sediments dominated by allochthonous or autochthonous OC has different temperature sensitivity in the longer term has not been addressed. We incubated sediments from two boreal lakes that had contrasting OC origin (allochthonous versus autochthonous), and OC characteristics (C/N ratios of 21 and 10) at 1, 3, 5, 8, 13, and 21 degrees C for five months. Compared to soil and litter mineralization, sediment OC mineralization rates were low in spite of low apparent activation energy (E-a). The fraction of the total OC pool that was lost during five months varied between 0.4 and 14.8%. We estimate that the sediment OC pool not becoming long-term preserved was degraded with average apparent turnover times between 3 and 32years. While OC mineralization was strongly dependent on temperature as well as on OC composition and origin, temperature sensitivity was similar across lakes and over time. We suggest that the temperature sensitivity of OC mineralization in lake sediments is similar across systems within the relevant seasonal scales of OC supply and degradation. Funding Agencies|FORMAS (the Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning); Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation; Malmens Foundation; FORMAS

The short-term (hourly and daily) variation in chromophoric dissolved organic matter (CDOM) in lakes is largely unknown. We assessed the spectral characteristics of light absorption by CDOM in a eutrophic, humic shallow mixed lake of temperate Sweden at a high-frequency (30 min) interval and during a full growing season (May to October). Physical time series, such as solar radiation, temperature, wind, and partial pressures of carbon dioxide in water and air, were measured synchronously. We identified a strong radiation-induced summer CDOM loss (25 to 50%) that developed over 4 months, which was accompanied by strong changes in CDOM absorption spectral shape. The magnitude of the CDOM loss exceeded subhourly to daily variability by an order of magnitude. Applying Fourier analysis, we demonstrate that variation in CDOM remained largely unaffected by rapid shifts in weather, and no apparent response to in-lake dissolved organic carbon production was found. In autumn, CDOM occasionally showed variation at hourly to daily time scales, reaching a maximum daily coefficient of variation of 15%. We suggest that lake-internal effects on CDOM are quenched in humic lake waters by dominating effects associated with imported CDOM and solar exposure. Since humic lake waters belong to one of the most abundant lake types on Earth, our results have important implications for the understanding of global CDOM cycling.

[1] We determined microbial decomposition of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) over 3.7 year long dark bioassays of six Swedish lake waters. The overall lost DOC fraction was similar in clearwater lakes (34.8 ± 2.4%) and in brownwater lakes (37.8 ± 1.9%). Reactivity continuum modeling revealed that the most labile DOC fraction, degrading at rates >0.01 d−1, was larger in the clearwater lakes (11.1 ± 1.2%) than in the brownwater lakes (0.8 ± 0.1%). The initial apparent first-order decay coefficientk was fivefold larger in the clearwater lakes (0.0043 ± 0.0012 d−1) than in the brownwater lakes (0.0009 ± 0.0003 d−1). Over time, k decreased more steeply in the clearwater lakes than in the brownwater lakes, reaching the k of the brownwater lakes within 5 months. Finally, k averaged 0.0001 d−1 in both lake categories. In the brownwater lakes, colored dissolved organic matter (CDOM) absorption decayed with an initial k twice as large (0.0018 ± 0.0008 d−1) as that of DOC. The initial kwas inversely correlated with initial specific UV absorption and CDOM absorption and positively correlated with initial tryptophan-like fluorescence as proxy for autochthonous DOC. Exposure to simulated sunlight at the end of the incubations caused loss of color in the clearwater lakes and loss of DOC in the brownwater lakes, where subsequent mineralization was also stimulated. The DOC lost in the absence of photochemical processes fell below previously reported watershed-scale losses in Sweden by 25% at most. This suggests that a major part of the in situ DOC loss could potentially be attributed to dark reactions alone.