Revisiting the Fates of Dead Leaves That Fall into Streams

As terrestrial leaf litter decomposes in rivers, its constituent elements follow multiple pathways. Carbon leached as dissolved organic matter can be quickly taken up by microbes, then respired before it can be transferred to the macroscopic food web. Alternatively, this detrital carbon can be ingested and assimilated by aquatic invertebrates, so it is retained longer in the stream and transferred to higher trophic levels. Microbial growth on litter can affect invertebrates through three pathways, which are not mutually exclusive. First, microbes can facilitate invertebrate feeding, improving food quality by conditioning leaves and making them more palatable for invertebrates. Second, microbes can be prey for invertebrates. Third, microbes can compete with invertebrates for resources bound within litter and may produce compounds that retard carbon and nitrogen fluxes to invertebrates. As litter is broken down into smaller particles, there are many opportunities for its elements to reenter the stream food web. Here, I describe a conceptual framework for evaluating how traits of leaf litter will affect its fate in food webs and ecosystems that is useful for predicting how global change will alter carbon fluxes into and out of streams.

Detrital Food Web Drives Aquatic Ecosystem Productivity in a Managed Floodplain

Differences in basal carbon sources, invertebrate density and salmon growth rate were observed in food webs across a lateral transect of aquatic habitats in the Sacramento River Valley, California. Similar to many large river valleys globally, the Sacramento River Valley has been extensively drained and leveed, hydrologically divorcing most floodplain wetlands and off-channel aquatic habitats from river channels. Today, the former floodplain is extensively managed for agriculture and wildlife habitat. Food web structure and juvenile Chinook Salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) growth were compared in three aquatic habitat types–river channel, a perennial drainage canal in the floodplain, and agricultural floodplain wetlands, which was seasonally inundated to provide bird and fish habitat during the non-agricultural growth season (late winter). Zooplankton densities on the floodplain wetland were 53 times more abundant, on average, than in the river. Juvenile Chinook Salmon raised on the floodplain wetland grew at mm/day, a rate 5x faster than fish raised in the adjacent river habitat (0.18 mm/day). Mean water residence times calculated for the floodplain agricultural wetland, perennial drainage canal and Sacramento River were 2.15 days, 23.5 seconds, and 1.7 seconds, respectively. Carbon in the floodplain wetland food web was sourced primarily through heterotrophic detrital pathways while carbon in the river was primarily autotrophic and sourced from in situ phytoplankton production. Hydrologic conditions typifying the ephemeral floodplain-shallower depths, warmer water, longer residence times and detrital carbon sources compared to deeper, colder, swifter water and an algal-based carbon source in the adjacent river channel-appear to facilitate the dramatically higher rates of food web production observed in floodplain verses river channel habitats. These results suggest that hydrologic patterns associated with winter flooding provide Mediterranean river systems access to detrital carbon sources that appear to be important energy sources for the production of fisheries and other aquatic resources.

Strategies for the Simulation of Sea Ice Organic Chemistry: Arctic Tests and Development

A numerical mechanism connecting ice algal ecodynamics with the buildup of organic macromolecules is tested within modeled pan-Arctic brine channels. The simulations take place offline in a reduced representation of sea ice geochemistry. Physical driver quantities derive from the global sea ice code CICE, including snow cover, thickness and internal temperature. The framework is averaged over ten boreal biogeographic zones. Computed nutrient-light-salt limited algal growth supports grazing, mortality and carbon flow. Vertical transport is diffusive but responds to pore structure. Simulated bottom layer chlorophyll maxima are reasonable, though delayed by about a month relative to observations due to uncertainties in snow variability. Upper level biota arise intermittently during flooding events. Macromolecular concentrations are tracked as proxy proteins, polysaccharides, lipids and refractory humics. The fresh biopolymers undergo succession and removal by bacteria. Baseline organics enter solely through cell disruption, so that the internal carbon content is initially biased low. By including exudation, agreement with dissolved organic or individual biopolymer data is achieved given strong release coupled to light intensity. Detrital carbon then reaches hundreds of micromolar, sufficient to support structural changes to the ice matrix.

Chemical transformations in downed logs and snags of mixed boreal species during decomposition

Snags and downed logs are substantial components of the detrital carbon pool in boreal forests. Effects of their decomposition on chemical and physical characteristics of the forest floor remain relatively unknown. The main objective of this study was to characterize chemical transformations of decaying logs and snags of common tree species in the boreal mixedwood forest. Logs and snags from a wide range of decay classes were sampled and analyzed by solid-state 13C nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and by near-infrared spectroscopy. Little or moderate chemical changes appeared in fresh and moderately decayed snags and logs, but in well-decayed logs, substantial degradation of carbohydrates and increases in lignin concentrations occurred. Deciduous species had initially more carbohydrates than coniferous species, but decomposition narrowed their differences, and in well-decayed logs, species differed mainly in terms of their lignin concentrations. Well-decayed deciduous logs reached very low wood densities, and their integration into the forest floor and long-term preservation remains questionable. In contrast, chemical composition of well-decayed coniferous logs resembles that of lignic forest floor (i.e., forest floor originating from deadwood decomposition), with preserved lignins, carbohydrates, and alkyl carbon compounds. Decomposed coniferous wood thus contributes to chemical heterogeneity of the forest floor, possibly promoting diversity of decomposers as well as carbon retention in soils.

Detrital carbon pools in temperate forests: magnitude and potential for landscape-scale assessment

Reliably estimating carbon storage and cycling in detrital biomass is an obstacle to carbon accounting. We examined carbon pools and fluxes in three small temperate forest landscapes to assess the magnitude of carbon stored in detrital biomass and determine whether detrital carbon storage is related to stand structural properties (leaf area, aboveground biomass, primary production) that can be estimated by remote sensing. We characterized these relationships with and without forest age as an additional predictive variable. Results depended on forest type. Carbon in dead woody debris was substantial at all sites, accounting for ∼17% of aboveground carbon, whereas carbon in forest floor was substantial in the subalpine Rocky Mountains (36% of aboveground carbon) and less important in northern hardwoods of New England and mixed forests of the upper Midwest (∼7%). Relationships to aboveground characteristics accounted for between 38% and 59% of the variability in carbon stored in forest floor and between 21% and 71% of the variability in carbon stored in dead woody material, indicating substantial differences among sites. Relating dead woody debris or forest floor carbon to other aboveground characteristics and (or) stand age may, in some forest types, provide a partial solution to the challenge of assessing fine-scale variability.