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  1. Abstract

    Northern peatlands are a globally significant source of methane (CH4), and emissions are projected to increase due to warming and permafrost loss. Understanding the microbial mechanisms behind patterns in CH4production in peatlands will be key to predicting annual emissions changes, with stable carbon isotopes (δ13C‐CH4) being a powerful tool for characterizing these drivers. Given that δ13C‐CH4is used in top‐down atmospheric inversion models to partition sources, our ability to model CH4production pathways and associated δ13C‐CH4values is critical. We sought to characterize the role of environmental conditions, including hydrologic and vegetation patterns associated with permafrost thaw, on δ13C‐CH4values from high‐latitude peatlands. We measured porewater and emitted CH4stable isotopes, pH, and vegetation composition from five boreal‐Arctic peatlands. Porewater δ13C‐CH4was strongly associated with peatland type, with δ13C enriched values obtained from more minerotrophic fens (−61.2 ± 9.1‰) compared to permafrost‐free bogs (−74.1 ± 9.4‰) and raised permafrost bogs (−81.6 ± 11.5‰). Variation in porewater δ13C‐CH4was best explained by sedge cover, CH4concentration, and the interactive effect of peatland type and pH (r2 = 0.50,p < 0.001). Emitted δ13C‐CH4varied greatly but was positively correlated with porewater δ13C‐CH4. We calculated a mixed atmospheric δ13C‐CH4value for northern peatlands of −65.3 ± 7‰ and show that this value is more sensitive to landscape drying than wetting under permafrost thaw scenarios. Our results suggest northern peatland δ13C‐CH4values are likely to shift in the future which has important implications for source partitioning in atmospheric inversion models.

     
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    Free, publicly-accessible full text available July 1, 2025
  2. Hernandez, Marcela (Ed.)
    ABSTRACT

    While wetlands are major sources of biogenic methane (CH4), our understanding of resident microbial metabolism is incomplete, which compromises the prediction of CH4emissions under ongoing climate change. Here, we employed genome-resolved multi-omics to expand our understanding of methanogenesis in the thawing permafrost peatland of Stordalen Mire in Arctic Sweden. In quadrupling the genomic representation of the site’s methanogens and examining their encoded metabolism, we revealed that nearly 20% of the metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) encoded the potential for methylotrophic methanogenesis. Further, 27% of the transcriptionally active methanogens expressed methylotrophic genes; forMethanosarcinalesandMethanobacterialesMAGs, these data indicated the use of methylated oxygen compounds (e.g., methanol), while forMethanomassiliicoccales, they primarily implicated methyl sulfides and methylamines. In addition to methanogenic methylotrophy, >1,700 bacterial MAGs across 19 phyla encoded anaerobic methylotrophic potential, with expression across 12 phyla. Metabolomic analyses revealed the presence of diverse methylated compounds in the Mire, including some known methylotrophic substrates. Active methylotrophy was observed across all stages of a permafrost thaw gradient in Stordalen, with the most frozen non-methanogenic palsa found to host bacterial methylotrophy and the partially thawed bog and fully thawed fen seen to house both methanogenic and bacterial methylotrophic activities. Methanogenesis across increasing permafrost thaw is thus revised from the sole dominance of hydrogenotrophic production and the appearance of acetoclastic at full thaw to consider the co-occurrence of methylotrophy throughout. Collectively, these findings indicate that methanogenic and bacterial methylotrophy may be an important and previously underappreciated component of carbon cycling and emissions in these rapidly changing wetland habitats.

    IMPORTANCE

    Wetlands are the biggest natural source of atmospheric methane (CH4) emissions, yet we have an incomplete understanding of the suite of microbial metabolism that results in CH4formation. Specifically, methanogenesis from methylated compounds is excluded from all ecosystem models used to predict wetland contributions to the global CH4budget. Though recent studies have shown methylotrophic methanogenesis to be active across wetlands, the broad climatic importance of the metabolism remains critically understudied. Further, some methylotrophic bacteria are known to produce methanogenic by-products like acetate, increasing the complexity of the microbial methylotrophic metabolic network. Prior studies of Stordalen Mire have suggested that methylotrophic methanogenesis is irrelevantin situand have not emphasized the bacterial capacity for metabolism, both of which we countered in this study. The importance of our findings lies in the significant advancement toward unraveling the broader impact of methylotrophs in wetland methanogenesis and, consequently, their contribution to the terrestrial global carbon cycle.

     
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  3. Abstract

    Quantifying the temperature sensitivity of methane (CH4) production is crucial for predicting how wetland ecosystems will respond to climate warming. Typically, the temperature sensitivity (often quantified as a Q10value) is derived from laboratory incubation studies and then used in biogeochemical models. However, studies report wide variation in incubation-inferred Q10values, with a large portion of this variation remaining unexplained. Here we applied observations in a thawing permafrost peatland (Stordalen Mire) and a well-tested process-rich model (ecosys) to interpret incubation observations and investigate controls on inferred CH4production temperature sensitivity. We developed a field-storage-incubation modeling approach to mimic the full incubation sequence, including field sampling at a particular time in the growing season, refrigerated storage, and laboratory incubation, followed by model evaluation. We found that CH4production rates during incubation are regulated by substrate availability and active microbial biomass of key microbial functional groups, which are affected by soil storage duration and temperature. Seasonal variation in substrate availability and active microbial biomass of key microbial functional groups led to strong time-of-sampling impacts on CH4production. CH4production is higher with less perturbation post-sampling, i.e. shorter storage duration and lower storage temperature. We found a wide range of inferred Q10values (1.2–3.5), which we attribute to incubation temperatures, incubation duration, storage duration, and sampling time. We also show that Q10values of CH4production are controlled by interacting biological, biochemical, and physical processes, which cause the inferred Q10values to differ substantially from those of the component processes. Terrestrial ecosystem models that use a constant Q10value to represent temperature responses may therefore predict biased soil carbon cycling under future climate scenarios.

     
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  4. Permafrost thaw increases active layer thickness, changes landscape hydrology and influences vegetation species composition. These changes alter belowground microbial and geochemical processes, affecting production, consumption and net emission rates of climate forcing trace gases. Net carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) and methane (CH 4 ) fluxes determine the radiative forcing contribution from these climate-sensitive ecosystems. Permafrost peatlands may be a mosaic of dry frozen hummocks, semi-thawed or perched sphagnum dominated areas, wet permafrost-free sedge dominated sites and open water ponds. We revisited estimates of climate forcing made for 1970 and 2000 for Stordalen Mire in northern Sweden and found the trend of increasing forcing continued into 2014. The Mire continued to transition from dry permafrost to sedge and open water areas, increasing by 100% and 35%, respectively, over the 45-year period, causing the net radiative forcing of Stordalen Mire to shift from negative to positive. This trend is driven by transitioning vegetation community composition, improved estimates of annual CO 2 and CH 4 exchange and a 22% increase in the IPCC's 100-year global warming potential (GWP_100) value for CH 4 . These results indicate that discontinuous permafrost ecosystems, while still remaining a net overall sink of C, can become a positive feedback to climate change on decadal timescales. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘Rising methane: is warming feeding warming? (part 2)’. 
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  5. Abstract. Methane (CH4) emissions from the boreal and arcticregion are globally significant and highly sensitive to climate change.There is currently a wide range in estimates of high-latitude annualCH4 fluxes, where estimates based on land cover inventories andempirical CH4 flux data or process models (bottom-up approaches)generally are greater than atmospheric inversions (top-down approaches). Alimitation of bottom-up approaches has been the lack of harmonizationbetween inventories of site-level CH4 flux data and the land coverclasses present in high-latitude spatial datasets. Here we present acomprehensive dataset of small-scale, surface CH4 flux data from 540terrestrial sites (wetland and non-wetland) and 1247 aquatic sites (lakesand ponds), compiled from 189 studies. The Boreal–Arctic Wetland and LakeMethane Dataset (BAWLD-CH4) was constructed in parallel with acompatible land cover dataset, sharing the same land cover classes to enablerefined bottom-up assessments. BAWLD-CH4 includes information onsite-level CH4 fluxes but also on study design (measurement method,timing, and frequency) and site characteristics (vegetation, climate,hydrology, soil, and sediment types, permafrost conditions, lake size anddepth, and our determination of land cover class). The different land coverclasses had distinct CH4 fluxes, resulting from definitions that wereeither based on or co-varied with key environmental controls. Fluxes ofCH4 from terrestrial ecosystems were primarily influenced by watertable position, soil temperature, and vegetation composition, while CH4fluxes from aquatic ecosystems were primarily influenced by watertemperature, lake size, and lake genesis. Models could explain more of thebetween-site variability in CH4 fluxes for terrestrial than aquaticecosystems, likely due to both less precise assessments of lake CH4fluxes and fewer consistently reported lake site characteristics. Analysisof BAWLD-CH4 identified both land cover classes and regions within theboreal and arctic domain, where future studies should be focused, alongsidemethodological approaches. Overall, BAWLD-CH4 provides a comprehensivedataset of CH4 emissions from high-latitude ecosystems that are usefulfor identifying research opportunities, for comparison against new fielddata, and model parameterization or validation. BAWLD-CH4 can bedownloaded from https://doi.org/10.18739/A2DN3ZX1R (Kuhn et al., 2021). 
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  6. Abstract

    Northern post-glacial lakes are significant, increasing sources of atmospheric carbon through ebullition (bubbling) of microbially-produced methane (CH4) from sediments. Ebullitive CH4flux correlates strongly with temperature, reflecting that solar radiation drives emissions. However, here we show that the slope of the temperature-CH4flux relationship differs spatially across two post-glacial lakes in Sweden. We compared these CH4emission patterns with sediment microbial (metagenomic and amplicon), isotopic, and geochemical data. The temperature-associated increase in CH4emissions was greater in lake middles—where methanogens were more abundant—than edges, and sediment communities were distinct between edges and middles. Microbial abundances, including those of CH4-cycling microorganisms and syntrophs, were predictive of porewater CH4concentrations. Results suggest that deeper lake regions, which currently emit less CH4than shallower edges, could add substantially to CH4emissions in a warmer Arctic and that CH4emission predictions may be improved by accounting for spatial variations in sediment microbiota.

     
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  7. Abstract. Methane emissions from boreal and arctic wetlands, lakes, and rivers areexpected to increase in response to warming and associated permafrost thaw.However, the lack of appropriate land cover datasets for scalingfield-measured methane emissions to circumpolar scales has contributed to alarge uncertainty for our understanding of present-day and future methaneemissions. Here we present the Boreal–Arctic Wetland and Lake Dataset(BAWLD), a land cover dataset based on an expert assessment, extrapolatedusing random forest modelling from available spatial datasets of climate,topography, soils, permafrost conditions, vegetation, wetlands, and surfacewater extents and dynamics. In BAWLD, we estimate the fractional coverage offive wetland, seven lake, and three river classes within 0.5 × 0.5∘ grid cells that cover the northern boreal and tundra biomes(17 % of the global land surface). Land cover classes were defined usingcriteria that ensured distinct methane emissions among classes, as indicatedby a co-developed comprehensive dataset of methane flux observations. InBAWLD, wetlands occupied 3.2 × 106 km2 (14 % of domain)with a 95 % confidence interval between 2.8 and 3.8 × 106 km2. Bog, fen, and permafrost bog were the most abundant wetlandclasses, covering ∼ 28 % each of the total wetland area,while the highest-methane-emitting marsh and tundra wetland classes occupied5 % and 12 %, respectively. Lakes, defined to include all lentic open-waterecosystems regardless of size, covered 1.4 × 106 km2(6 % of domain). Low-methane-emitting large lakes (>10 km2) and glacial lakes jointly represented 78 % of the total lakearea, while high-emitting peatland and yedoma lakes covered 18 % and 4 %,respectively. Small (<0.1 km2) glacial, peatland, and yedomalakes combined covered 17 % of the total lake area but contributeddisproportionally to the overall spatial uncertainty in lake area with a95 % confidence interval between 0.15 and 0.38 × 106 km2. Rivers and streams were estimated to cover 0.12  × 106 km2 (0.5 % of domain), of which 8 % was associated withhigh-methane-emitting headwaters that drain organic-rich landscapes.Distinct combinations of spatially co-occurring wetland and lake classeswere identified across the BAWLD domain, allowing for the mapping of“wetscapes” that have characteristic methane emission magnitudes andsensitivities to climate change at regional scales. With BAWLD, we provide adataset which avoids double-accounting of wetland, lake, and river extentsand which includes confidence intervals for each land cover class. As such,BAWLD will be suitable for many hydrological and biogeochemical modellingand upscaling efforts for the northern boreal and arctic region, inparticular those aimed at improving assessments of current and futuremethane emissions. Data are freely available athttps://doi.org/10.18739/A2C824F9X (Olefeldt et al., 2021). 
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  8. Abstract

    Stable isotopes have emerged as popular study targets when investigating emission of methane (CH4) from lakes. Yet little is known on how isotopic patterns conform to variations in emission magnitudes—a highly relevant question. Here, we present a large multiyear data set on stable isotopes of CH4ebullition (bubbling) from three small adjacent subarctic lakes. The δ13C‐CH4and δD‐CH4range from −78.4‰ to −53.1‰ and from −369.8‰ to −218.8‰, respectively, and vary greatly among the lakes. The signatures suggest dominant hydrogenotrophic methanogenesis, particularly in the deep zones, but there are also signals of seemingly acetoclastic production in some high fluxing shallow areas, possibly fueled by in situ vegetation, but in‐sediment anaerobic CH4oxidation cannot be ruled out as an alternative cause. The observed patterns, however, are not consistent across the lakes. Neither do they correspond to the spatiotemporal variations in the measured bubble CH4fluxes. Patterns of acetoclastic and hydrogenotrophic production plus oxidation demonstrate that gains and losses of sediment CH4are dominated by sub‐lake scale processes. The δD‐CH4in the bubbles was significantly different depending on measurement month, likely due to evaporation effects. On a larger scale, our isotopic data, combined with those from other lakes, show a significant difference in bubble δD‐CH4between postglacial and thermokarst lakes, an important result for emission inventories. Although this characteristic theoretically assists in source partitioning studies, most hypothetical future shifts in δD‐CH4due to high‐latitude lake area or production pathway are too small to lead to atmospheric changes detectable with current technology.

     
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