Soil carbon and biodiversity response to Scottish Highlands rewilding

土壤碳和生物多样性对苏格兰高地野化的反应

• 批准号: 2883304
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Stirling
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2883304
• 关键词: Soil; carbon; biodiversity; response; Scottish

Rewilding is increasingly considered as a powerful tool to limit both the ongoing declinesin biodiversity and mitigate climate change, through its potential to restore biodiversehabitats and increase ecosystem-scale carbon (C) storage. In Scotland, where ca. sevenmillion sheep and one million deer graze the land predator-free and prevent the naturalregeneration of trees, the removal of these large herbivores through fencing has allowednatural forest regeneration in several small-scale experiments (see below). The visualsuccess of these initiatives has been embraced by the rewilding conservation movementand has led to increasingly vocal calls to 'rewild' the Scottish Highlands. Rewildinginitiatives often infer that there will be wider holistic benefits (e.g., Warner et al. 2021),however, confidence in the true benefits of rewilding, particularly biodiversity recoveryand C sequestration, is limited due to a lack of above and belowground data.While these rewilding initiatives likely increase above ground carbon storage by allowingtree growth, the overall change in ecosystem C storage also depends on the response ofthe largest C stock in terrestrial ecosystems: the soil C stock. Recent findings fromexperimental tree planting in the Scottish uplands suggests that while tree planting led toan accumulation of C aboveground, it simultaneously led to decrease in C sequestrationbelowground (Friggens et al. 2020), thereby cancelling out the aboveground benefits.Preliminary data from a rewilding initiative at Ben Lawers Nature reserve suggest that thisdecrease in soil C may also occur following the natural regeneration of trees.Furthermore, soils are globally the largest reservoir of biodiversity, hosting more than25% of the Planet's total biodiversity (Bardgett and van der Putten (2014). Holisticbenefits of rewilding on biodiversity thus largely depend on the response of the soil.There is thus an urgent need to carefully considering the response of the soil to rewilding.Can rewilding the Scottish Highlands increase ecosystem-scale carbon storage andbiodiversity, once the soil is considered?

通过恢复生物多样性栖息地和增加生态系统规模的碳（C）储存，野化越来越被认为是限制生物多样性持续下降和减缓气候变化的有力工具。在苏格兰，如果。700万只羊和100万只鹿在没有捕食者的土地上吃草，并阻止了树木的自然再生，通过围栏清除这些大型食草动物，在几个小规模的实验中，天然森林得以再生（见下文）。这些举措在视觉上的成功已经被重新野生化的保护运动所接受，并导致越来越多的声音呼吁“重新野生化”苏格兰高地。重新野生化倡议通常推断将有更广泛的整体利益（例如，然而，由于缺乏地上和地下数据，人们对野化的真正益处，特别是生物多样性恢复和碳封存的信心有限。虽然这些野化举措可能通过允许树木生长来增加地上碳储量，但生态系统碳储量的总体变化还取决于陆地生态系统中最大的碳储量：土壤碳储量的响应。最近在苏格兰高地进行的实验性植树的发现表明，虽然植树导致了地上碳的积累，但同时也导致了地下碳固存的减少（Friggens等人，2020），来自本劳尔斯自然保护区的一项重新野生化倡议的初步数据表明，土壤碳的这种减少也可能发生在自然更新之后，此外，土壤是全球最大的生物多样性储存库，占地球生物多样性总量的25%以上（Bardgett和货车der Putten（2014））。因此，重新野化对生物多样性的整体效益在很大程度上取决于土壤的反应。因此，迫切需要仔细考虑土壤对重新野化的反应。一旦考虑土壤，苏格兰高地的重新野化能否增加生态系统规模的碳储存和生物多样性？