R. K. Varner


2021

DOI bib
The Boreal-Arctic Wetland and Lake Dataset (BAWLD)
David Olefeldt, Mikael Hovemyr, McKenzie A. Kuhn, David Bastviken, Theodore J. Bohn, John Connolly, Patrick Crill, Eugénie Euskirchen, S. A. Finkelstein, Hélène Genet, Guido Grosse, Lorna I. Harris, Liam Heffernan, Manuel Helbig, Gustaf Hugelius, Ryan H. S. Hutchins, Sari Juutinen, Mark J. Lara, Avni Malhotra, Kristen L. Manies, A. David McGuire, Susan M. Natali, J. A. O’Donnell, Frans‐Jan W. Parmentier, Aleksi Räsänen, Christina Schädel, Oliver Sonnentag, Maria Strack, Suzanne E. Tank, Claire C. Treat, R. K. Varner, Tarmo Virtanen, Rebecca K. Warren, Jennifer D. Watts

Abstract. Methane emissions from boreal and arctic wetlands, lakes, and rivers are expected to increase in response to warming and associated permafrost thaw. However, the lack of appropriate land cover datasets for scaling field-measured methane emissions to circumpolar scales has contributed to a large uncertainty for our understanding of present-day and future methane emissions. Here we present the Boreal-Arctic Wetland and Lake Dataset (BAWLD), a land cover dataset based on an expert assessment, extrapolated using random forest modelling from available spatial datasets of climate, topography, soils, permafrost conditions, vegetation, wetlands, and surface water extents and dynamics. In BAWLD, we estimate the fractional coverage of five wetland, seven lake, and three river classes within 0.5 × 0.5° grid cells that cover the northern boreal and tundra biomes (17 % of the global land surface). Land cover classes were defined using criteria that ensured distinct methane emissions among classes, as indicated by a co-developed comprehensive dataset of methane flux observations. In BAWLD, wetlands occupied 3.2 × 106 km2 (14 % of domain) with a 95 % confidence interval between 2.8 and 3.8 × 106 km2. Bog, fen, and permafrost bog were the most abundant wetland classes, covering ~28 % each of the total wetland area, while the highest methane emitting marsh and tundra wetland classes occupied 5 and 12 %, respectively. Lakes, defined to include all lentic open-water ecosystems regardless of size, covered 1.4 × 106 km2 (6 % of domain). Low methane-emitting large lakes (> 10 km2) and glacial lakes jointly represented 78 % of the total lake area, while high-emitting peatland and yedoma lakes covered 18 and 4 %, respectively. Small (< 0.1 km2) glacial, peatland, and yedoma lakes combined covered 17 % of the total lake area, but contributed disproportionally to the overall spatial uncertainty of lake area with a 95 % confidence interval between 0.15 and 0.38 × 106 km2. Rivers and streams were estimated to cover 0.12 × 106 km2 (0.5 % of domain) of which 8 % was associated with high-methane emitting headwaters that drain organic-rich landscapes. Distinct combinations of spatially co-occurring wetland and lake classes were identified across the BAWLD domain, allowing for the mapping of “wetscapes” that will have characteristic methane emission magnitudes and sensitivities to climate change at regional scales. With BAWLD, we provide a dataset which avoids double-accounting of wetland, lake and river extents, and which includes confidence intervals for each land cover class. As such, BAWLD will be suitable for many hydrological and biogeochemical modelling and upscaling efforts for the northern Boreal and Arctic region, in particular those aimed at improving assessments of current and future methane emissions. Data is freely available at https://doi.org/10.18739/A2C824F9X (Olefeldt et al., 2021).

2020

DOI bib
COSORE: A community database for continuous soil respiration and other soil‐atmosphere greenhouse gas flux data
Ben Bond‐Lamberty, Danielle Christianson, Avni Malhotra, Stephanie C. Pennington, Debjani Sihi, Amir AghaKouchak, Hassan Anjileli, M. Altaf Arain, Juan J. Armestó, Samaneh Ashraf, Mioko Ataka, Dennis Baldocchi, T. Andrew Black, Nina Buchmann, Mariah S. Carbone, Shih Chieh Chang, Patrick Crill, Peter S. Curtis, Eric A. Davidson, Ankur R. Desai, John E. Drake, Tarek S. El‐Madany, Michael Gavazzi, Carolyn-Monika Görres, Christopher M. Gough, Michael L. Goulden, Jillian W. Gregg, O. Gutiérrez del Arroyo, Jin Sheng He, Takashi Hirano, Anya M. Hopple, Holly Hughes, Järvi Järveoja, Rachhpal S. Jassal, Jinshi Jian, Haiming Kan, Jason P. Kaye, Yuji Kominami, Naishen Liang, David A. Lipson, Catriona A. Macdonald, Kadmiel Maseyk, Kayla Mathes, Marguerite Mauritz, Melanie A. Mayes, Steven G. McNulty, Guofang Miao, Mirco Migliavacca, S. D. Miller, Chelcy Ford Miniat, Jennifer Goedhart Nietz, Mats Nilsson, Asko Noormets, Hamidreza Norouzi, Christine O’Connell, Bruce Osborne, Cecilio Oyonarte, Zhuo Pang, Matthias Peichl, Elise Pendall, Jorge F. Perez‐Quezada, Claire L. Phillips, Richard P. Phillips, James W. Raich, Alexandre A. Renchon, Nadine K. Ruehr, Enrique P. Sánchez‐Cañete, Matthew Saunders, K. E. Savage, Marion Schrumpf, Russell L. Scott, Ulli Seibt, Whendee L. Silver, Wu Sun, Daphne Szutu, Kentaro Takagi, Masahiro Takagi, Masaaki Teramoto, Mark G. Tjoelker, Susan E. Trumbore, Masahito Ueyama, Rodrigo Vargas, R. K. Varner, Joseph Verfaillie, Christoph S. Vogel, Jinsong Wang, G. Winston, Tana E. Wood, Juying Wu, Thomas Wutzler, Jiye Zeng, Tianshan Zha, Quan Zhang, Junliang Zou
Global Change Biology, Volume 26, Issue 12

Globally, soils store two to three times as much carbon as currently resides in the atmosphere, and it is critical to understand how soil greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and uptake will respond to ongoing climate change. In particular, the soil-to-atmosphere CO2 flux, commonly though imprecisely termed soil respiration (RS ), is one of the largest carbon fluxes in the Earth system. An increasing number of high-frequency RS measurements (typically, from an automated system with hourly sampling) have been made over the last two decades; an increasing number of methane measurements are being made with such systems as well. Such high frequency data are an invaluable resource for understanding GHG fluxes, but lack a central database or repository. Here we describe the lightweight, open-source COSORE (COntinuous SOil REspiration) database and software, that focuses on automated, continuous and long-term GHG flux datasets, and is intended to serve as a community resource for earth sciences, climate change syntheses and model evaluation. Contributed datasets are mapped to a single, consistent standard, with metadata on contributors, geographic location, measurement conditions and ancillary data. The design emphasizes the importance of reproducibility, scientific transparency and open access to data. While being oriented towards continuously measured RS , the database design accommodates other soil-atmosphere measurements (e.g. ecosystem respiration, chamber-measured net ecosystem exchange, methane fluxes) as well as experimental treatments (heterotrophic only, etc.). We give brief examples of the types of analyses possible using this new community resource and describe its accompanying R software package.
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