SAES-422 Multistate Research Activity Accomplishments Report
Sections
Status: Approved
Basic Information
- Project No. and Title: NE1938 : Carbon Dynamics and Hydromorphology in Depressional Wetland Systems
- Period Covered: 10/01/2019 to 11/10/2019
- Date of Report: 01/06/2020
- Annual Meeting Dates: 11/10/2019 to 11/10/2019
Participants
See attached list
See attached minutes from the meeting
Accomplishments
This is the first year of the project. As such there are little outcomes or outputs to report.
Below are our immediate (2020) milestones:
- Site selection for new participant. Colby is seeking an establish a site, maybe 2; Judy has a site identified.
- Wrap up of NE-1438. Karen will develop and distribute a data survey, and will eventually work on aggregation of the data.
- A gas sampling demonstration will occur at the 2020 NERCSS Workshop in Virginia. Mark and Colby will discuss protocols. All should identify a lab that could analyze their samples. Karen will follow up with KSSL.
- Tea bags will be deployed on a trial/exploratory basis in 2020. This may also be demonstrated at the NERCSS Workshop…or at a Mid-Atlantic Hydric Soil Committee meeting.
- The next Northeast Regional Pedology Field Tour is scheduled for the summer of 2021 and will be hosted by John Galbraith, who will plan to include a visit to his vernal pool site during the trip.
Impacts
- This is the first year of the study. These are the expected impacts: 1) This research will result in improved region-wide understanding of the soils, hydrology, and carbon accounting of depressional wetlands. We will use the depressional wetlands as surrogates for a range of wetlands that have both inundation and saturation and that these conditions vary seasonally. This research will be a continuation of our region-wide focus on hydric soils and hydric indicators to determine if there is a need for additional hydric soil indicators. If needed, new hydric soil indicators may be proposed and submitted for inclusion as part of the National Indicators of Hydric Soils for the Northeast Supplement. 2) External funding: we already have plans to approach USDA-NRCS in their next call for soils related research to seek additional funding. 3) Our previous research showed that there is significant variation in soil climate within depressional wetlands over a 4 year period. Considering that variability, the additional data from our region-wide approach (temperature gradient) to measure reducing conditions with IRIS tubes may have significant impact on how (when and for how long) reducing conditions within wetlands are measured and evaluated. 4) Our studies will provide metrics of main sources carbon to the soil (litterfall and deadfall) and the rates that these soil carbon sources decompose. We can assume that decomposition results in an equivalent amount of CO2 is lost to the atmosphere. We will measure GHG fluxes at the same time as a check of the release of carbon from these systems. These inputs and losses will provide an estimate of the amount of C that is sequestered in these soils yearly and how inundation and saturation effect the C balance toward sequestration. 5) The differences in temperature among our sites represents the projected change in temperature in the next century. Thus, our study will provide an estimate of how wetland soils will react to an increase in temperature as a result of global warming.
Publications
No publications at this time