PNNL

Abstract

Soils both produce and consume methane (CH4), a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change. In coastal forests, upland soils are shifting from being CH4 sinks to sources as sea levels rise, increasingly flooding soils with little prior inundation history. Ecosystem CH4 budgets are highly uncertain due in part to the difficulty in separating fluxes measured at the soil surface into individual production and consumption processes which are likely to have different responses to future environmental conditions. We measured growing season CH4 fluxes from soil monoliths transplanted four years prior along an inundation and salinity gradient to determine how changes in abiotic conditions control CH4 flux rates. To parse net fluxes measured at the soil surface into their component gross rates, we paired field measurements with a stable isotope pool dilution incubation of surface soils. Throughout the growing season, net soil surface CH4 flux was positively correlated with soil moisture (p