Greening of a Boreal Rich Fen Driven by CO2 Fertilisation

Boreal peatlands store vast amounts of soil organic carbon (C) owing to the imbalance between productivity and decay rates. In the recent decades, this carbon stock has been exposed to a warming climate. During the past decade alone, the Arctic has warmed by ∼ 0.75°C which is almost twice the rate of the global average. Although, a wide range of studies have assessed peatlands’ C cycling, our understanding of the factors governing source / sink dynamics of peatland C stock under a warming climate remains a critical uncertainty at site, regional, and global scales. Here our focus was on answering two key questions: (1) What drives the interannual variability of carbon dioxide (CO₂) fluxes at the Bonanza Creek rich fen in Alaska, and (2) What are the internal carbon allocation patterns during the study years? We addressed these knowledge-gaps using an intermediate complexity terrestrial ecosystem model calibrated by a Bayesian model-data fusion framework at a weekly timestep with publicly available eddy covariance, satellite-based earth observation, and in-situ datasets for 2014 to 2020. We found that the greening trend (a relative increase of leaf area index ∼0.12 m² m^-2 by 2020) in the fen ecosystem is forced by a CO₂ fertilisation effect which in combination resulted in increased gross primary production (GPP). Relative to 2014, GPP increased by ∼75 gC m^-2 year^-1 (by 2020; 95% confidence interval (CI): -41.35 gC m^-2 year^-1 to 213.55 gC m^-2 year^-1) while heterotrophic respiration stayed constant. Consistent with the observed greening, our analysis indicates that the ecosystem allocated more C to foliage (∼50%) over the structural (A carbon pool consisting of branches, stems and coarse roots; ∼30%) and fine root C pools (∼20%).