Small Thaw Ponds: An Unaccounted Source of Methane in the Canadian High Arctic

Thawing permafrost in the Canadian Arctic tundra leads to peat erosion and slumping in narrow and shallow runnel ponds that surround more commonly studied polygonal ponds. Here we compared the methane production between runnel and polygonal ponds using stable isotope ratios, ¹⁴C signatures, and inve...

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Veröffentlicht in:PloS one Jg. 8; H. 11; S. e78204
Hauptverfasser: Negandhi, Karita, Laurion, Isabelle, Whiticar, Michael J., Galand, Pierre E., Xu, Xiaomei, Lovejoy, Connie
Format: Journal Article
Sprache:Englisch
Veröffentlicht: United States Public Library of Science 13.11.2013
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Schlagworte:
Archaea
Arctic Regions
Canada
Carbon 14
Carbon dioxide
Carbon Dioxide - analysis
Carbon dioxide emissions
Carbon sources
Communities
Ecosystems
Gene sequencing
Genes, Archaeal
Global Warming
Isotope ratios
Methane
Methane - analysis
Methane production
Methanobacterium - genetics
Methanogenesis
Methanogenic archaea
Molecular Typing
Next-generation sequencing
Nitrates
Peat
Permafrost
Phylogeny
Polar environments
Ponds
RNA
RNA, Ribosomal, 16S - genetics
rRNA 16S
Sediments
Signatures
Slumping
Stable isotopes
Studies
Thawing
Tundra
Tundra ecology
Tundras
Water Microbiology
Canada
Arctic Regions
California
France
United States > US
Arctic region
Quebec Canada
ISSN:1932-6203, 1932-6203
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Zusammenfassung:Thawing permafrost in the Canadian Arctic tundra leads to peat erosion and slumping in narrow and shallow runnel ponds that surround more commonly studied polygonal ponds. Here we compared the methane production between runnel and polygonal ponds using stable isotope ratios, ¹⁴C signatures, and investigated potential methanogenic communities through high-throughput sequencing archaeal 16S rRNA genes. We found that runnel ponds had significantly higher methane and carbon dioxide emissions, produced from a slightly larger fraction of old carbon, compared to polygonal ponds. The methane stable isotopic signature indicated production through acetoclastic methanogenesis, but gene signatures from acetoclastic and hydrogenotrophic methanogenic Archaea were detected in both polygonal and runnel ponds. We conclude that runnel ponds represent a source of methane from potentially older C, and that they contain methanogenic communities able to use diverse sources of carbon, increasing the risk of augmented methane release under a warmer climate.
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Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Conceived and designed the experiments: KN IL CL. Performed the experiments: KN IL. Analyzed the data: KN IL XX MJW PEG. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: IL CL XX MJW. Wrote the paper: KN IL CL PEG XX MJW.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0078204