Compensatory Mechanisms Absorb Regional Carbon Losses Within a Rapidly Shifting Coastal Mosaic
Compensatory Mechanisms Absorb Regional Carbon Losses Within a Rapidly Shifting Coastal Mosaic
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DOI：
10.1007/s10021-023-00877-7
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发表时间：
2023-09
期刊：
影响因子：
3.7
通讯作者：
Alexander J. Smith;Karen McGlathery;Yaping Chen;Carolyn J. Ewers Lewis;S. Doney;K. Gedan;Carly K. LaRoche;Peter Berg;Michael L. Pace;J. Zinnert;M. Kirwan
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文献类型：
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作者：
Alexander J. Smith;Karen McGlathery;Yaping Chen;Carolyn J. Ewers Lewis;S. Doney;K. Gedan;Carly K. LaRoche;Peter Berg;Michael L. Pace;J. Zinnert;M. Kirwan
沿海景观是不同生态系统自然变化的镶嵌体，随着海平面上升而迅速迁移。先前的研究表明，各个生态系统之间的转变对全球碳循环具有不成比例的影响，但这无法解决多个生态系统之间可能在沿海景观中级联的非线性相互作用。在这里，我们综合了 36 年（1984 年和 2020 年）内快速海侵的大西洋中部海岸大部分地区各种生态系统的碳储量、积累率和区域土地覆盖数据。弗吉尼亚东海岸的沿海景观由温带森林、盐沼、海草床、障壁岛和沿海泻湖组成。我们发现，各个生态系统内的快速损失和收益在很大程度上相互抵消，这导致不同生态系统出现相对稳定的区域，并且区域碳储存减少了4%（196.9 Gg C）。然而，碳替代时间的新指标表明，幸存的生态系统只需要 7~7 年的碳积累就能补偿这种损失。我们的研究结果揭示了整个景观范围内独特的补偿机制，在历史和当代海平面上升的情况下，可以快速吸收损失并促进增加区域碳储存。然而，随着气候变化加剧碳损失，这些补偿机制的强度可能会减弱。
Coastal landscapes are naturally shifting mosaics of distinct ecosystems that are rapidly migrating with sea-level rise. Previous work illustrates that transitions among individual ecosystems have disproportionate impacts on the global carbon cycle, but this cannot address nonlinear interactions between multiple ecosystems that potentially cascade across the coastal landscape. Here, we synthesize carbon stocks, accumulation rates, and regional land cover data over 36 years (1984 and 2020) for a variety of ecosystems across a large portion of the rapidly transgressing mid-Atlantic coast. The coastal landscape of the Virginia Eastern Shore consists of temperate forest, salt marsh, seagrass beds, barrier islands, and coastal lagoons. We found that rapid losses and gains within individual ecosystems largely offset each other, which resulted in relatively stable areas for the different ecosystems, and a 4% (196.9 Gg C) reduction in regional carbon storage. However, new metrics of carbon replacement times indicated that it would take only ~ 7 years of carbon accumulation in surviving ecosystems to compensate this loss. Our findings reveal unique compensatory mechanisms at the scale of entire landscapes that quickly absorb losses and facilitate increased regional carbon storage in the face of historical and contemporary sea-level rise. However, the strength of these compensatory mechanisms may diminish as climate change exacerbates the magnitude of carbon losses.