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The Predominance of Nongrowing Season Emissions to the Annual Methane Budget of a Semiarid Alpine Meadow on the Northeastern Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

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Abstract

The terrestrial methane budget varies between different vegetation types and soil conditions and is highly uncertain for alpine grasslands. This work used eddy covariance techniques to continuously measure CH4 flux (NEEm) over a semiarid alpine meadow on the northeastern Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau from January 2017 to August 2019. The diel NEEm averaged 0.14 ± 0.98 nmol CH4 m−2 s−1 (mean ± S.D.), with a rough pattern of daytime release and nocturnal uptake. The 8-day NEEm exhibited a similar sinusoid variation, with a peak of 6.8 mg CH4 m−2 d−1 at the end of April and a minimum of −1.5 mg CH4 m−2 d−1 at the end of August. The maximum release probably coincided with the thawing of frozen soil in the root zone, and the peak uptake may be related to high soil temperature. Monthly CH4 uptake was highest from June to September and consumed 51.7 mg CH4 m−2 from the atmosphere. CH4 production in the other months totaled 647.6 mg CH4 m−2. The semiarid alpine meadow thus acted as a weak net CH4 source, releasing ca 0.6 g CH4 m−2 year−1 to the atmosphere. The boosted regression trees analysis shows that the sensible heat flux (H) is positively related to half-hour NEEm and accounted for 34% of its variability. The piecewise structural equation models reveal that the magnitude of the effects from soil temperature and vapor pressure deficit on 8-day and monthly NEEm were almost equal, but acted in opposite directions. Vegetation growth and soil moisture exerted little direct influence on NEEm variability at half-hour, 8-day, or monthly scales. Our results show that CH4 emissions of the nongrowing season dominate the annual methane budget for this alpine meadow area. Methane consumption during the growing season was significantly constrained by low soil temperature and high soil water content. These findings imply that semiarid alpine meadows may consume more methane during the growing season if soil temperatures increase and soil moisture levels decrease as projected by future warming scenarios, thus constituting a climate change negative feedback.

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Acknowledgements

We sincerely thank the anonymous reviewers for the helpful comments. This work was funded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences-People’s Government of Qinghai Province Joint Grant on Sanjiangyuan National Park Research (YHZX-2020-07), the National Key R&D Program (2017YFA0604802), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41730752, 41877547), and the Qinghai Innovation Platform Construction Project (2017-ZJ-Y20).

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Author notes

  1. Hongqin Li and Jingbin Zhu are equally contributed to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Life Sciences, Luoyang Normal University, Luoyang, 471934, Henan, China

    Hongqin Li, Gang Qin & Yingnian Li

  2. Institute of Sanjiangyuan National Park, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 23, Xinning Streets, Xining, 810001, Qinghai, China

    Hongqin Li, Fawei Zhang & Yongsheng Yang

  3. Key Laboratory of Adaptation and Evolution of Plateau Biota, Northwest Institute of Plateau Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xining, 810001, Qinghai, China

    Hongqin Li, Fawei Zhang, Yongsheng Yang, Yikang Li, Guangmin Cao & Huakun Zhou

  4. College of Tourism, Resources and Environment, Zaozhuang University, Zaozhuang, 277100, Shandong, China

    Jingbin Zhu

  5. Qinghai Provincial Key Laboratory of Restoration Ecology in Cold Region, Northwest Institute of Plateau Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xining, 810001, Qinghai, China

    Fawei Zhang & Huakun Zhou

  6. Key Laboratory of Ecosystem Network Observation and Modeling, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Junbang Wang

  7. Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences, National Agriculture and Food Research Organization, Tsukuba, 305-8604, Japan

    Mingyuan Du

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  1. Hongqin Li
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Correspondence to Fawei Zhang or Junbang Wang.

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Author Contributions HL, JZ, and FZ carried out all analysis. FZ and JW conceived the manuscript. All authors collaborated in interpreting the results and writing the paper.

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Li, H., Zhu, J., Zhang, F. et al. The Predominance of Nongrowing Season Emissions to the Annual Methane Budget of a Semiarid Alpine Meadow on the Northeastern Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. Ecosystems 25, 526–536 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-021-00669-x

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