The impacts of climate change and human activities on biogeochemical cycles on the Q inghai‐ T ibetan P lateau

作者：Huai Chen, Qiuan Zhu, Changhui Peng, Ning Wu, Yanfen Wang, Xiuqing Fang, Yongheng Gao, Dan Zhu, Gang Yang, Jianqing Tian, Xiaoming Kang, Shilong Piao, Hua Ouyang, Wenhua Xiang, Zhi‐Bin Luo, Hong Jiang, Xingzhang Song, Yao Zhang, Guirui Yu, Xinquan Zhao, Peng Gong, Tandong Yao, Jianghua Wu · 发表于：Global Change Biology · 年份：2013 · DOI：10.1111/gcb.12277 · 被引用次数：940 · 研究领域：Climate change and permafrost、Cryospheric studies and observations、Geology and Paleoclimatology Research

With a pace of about twice the observed rate of global warming, the temperature on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (Earth's 'third pole') has increased by 0.2 °C per decade over the past 50 years, which results in significant permafrost thawing and glacier retreat. Our review suggested that warming enhanced net primary production and soil respiration, decreased methane (CH(4)) emissions from wetlands and increased CH(4) consumption of meadows, but might increase CH(4) emissions from lakes. Warming-induced permafrost thawing and glaciers melting would also result in substantial emission of old carbon dioxide (CO(2)) and CH(4). Nitrous oxide (N(2)O) emission was not stimulated by warming itself, but might be slightly enhanced by wetting. However, there are many uncertainties in such biogeochemical cycles under climate change. Human activities (e.g. grazing, land cover changes) further modified the biogeochemical cycles and amplified such uncertainties on the plateau. If the projected warming and wetting continues, the future biogeochemical cycles will be more complicated. So facing research in this field is an ongoing challenge of integrating field observations with process-based ecosystem models to predict the impacts of future climate change and human activities at various temporal and spatial scales. To reduce the uncertainties and to improve the precision of the predictions of the impacts of climate change and human activities on biogeochemical cycles, efforts should focus on c...