Maria Holmberg and colleagues present an approach to collate spatially explicit estimated fluxes of GHGs (carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide) for the main land use sectors in the landscape, and show how these fluxes can be aggregated to calculate net emissions of an entire region. They used INCA-C and PERSiST to estimate the flux of organic carbon from terrestrial ecosystems to lakes and rivers.
They developed and tested the approach in a large river basin in Finland, providing information from intensively studied eLTER research sites. To evaluate the full GHG balance, they included fluxes from natural ecosystems (lakes, rivers, and undrained mires) together with anthropogenic fluxes from agriculture and forestry. They quantified fluxes using an anthropogenic emissions model (FRES), a forest growth and carbon balance model (PREBAS), and literature values for emissions from lakes, rivers, undrained mires, peat extraction sites and cropland. Spatial data sources included CORINE land use data, soil map, lake and river shorelines, national forest inventory data, and statistical data on anthropogenic activities. Emission uncertainties were evaluated with Monte Carlo simulations. They summed the vertical fluxes of spatially explicit net emissions, disregarding the impact of lateral fluxes from terrestrial to aquatic ecosystems on the vertical fluxes.
Their model results showed that artificial surfaces were the most emission intensive land-cover class while lakes and rivers were about as emission intensive as arable land. Forests were the dominant land cover in the region (66%). The forest C sink decreased total emissions for the region by 72%. The region’s net emissions amounted to 4.37 ± 1.43 Tg CO2-eq yr-1, corresponding to a net emission intensity 0.16 Gg CO2-eq km-2 yr-1, and estimated per capita net emissions of 5.6 Mg CO2-eq yr-1. Using INCA-C and PERSiST, the amount of organic C leaching from mires, cropland, and forests to the watercourses was estimated to correspond to about 10% of the CO2 and CH4 emissions from land to air.
Although the landscape approach developed by Dr. Holmberg and colleagues opens opportunities to examine the sensitivities of important GHG fluxes to changes in land use and climate, management actions, and mitigation of anthropogenic emissions, there is still a need to extend the work to a fully integrated regional GHG budget, accounting for all lateral fluxes of C- and N-containing compounds.