Pristine peatlands provide essential social and environmental services. However, throughout history, the artificial drainage of these organic ecosystems has led to increased nutrient leaching and carbon export, resulting in downstream consequences. Although peatland rewetting has gained popularity as a practice, comprehensive assessments of the long-term impact of rewetting are still needed. This project aims to understand the impacts of combined rewetting practices in fens on water chemistry and microbial composition across treatments (clear-cut vs forested), sites and sampling depths. Pore and ditch waters were sampled and filtered from June 2023 to October 2023. The main water chemical components were characterized with different machines and methodologies, and DNA was extracted and sequenced for the 16S rDNA amplicon gene. The results suggest that twenty years of combining tree removal and damming resulted in a water chemical composition similar to a nearby natural fen. Moreover, microbial communities responded to the treatments as expected and revealed the dominance of Proteobacteria following flooding, and it has been hypothesized that they have a functional role as methanotrophs. Furthermore, my data indicated that sampling ditch water only reflects the chemical status and microbiome of the rewetted riparian areas with high water tables to some extent. Generally, the effects of rewetting were depth-dependent and varied across the seasons. Future research should focus more on this temporal dimension, as it may guide how the monitoring of rewetting efforts should be conducted.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-533623 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Calvo Mora, David |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för ekologi och genetik, Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för biologisk grundutbildning |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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