Soil carbon and biodiversity response to Scottish Highlands rewilding

土壤碳和生物多样性对苏格兰高地野化的反应

• 批准号: 2883304
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Stirling
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2883304
• 关键词: Soil; carbon; biodiversity; response; Scottish

Rewilding is increasingly considered as a powerful tool to limit both the ongoing declinesin biodiversity and mitigate climate change, through its potential to restore biodiversehabitats and increase ecosystem-scale carbon (C) storage. In Scotland, where ca. sevenmillion sheep and one million deer graze the land predator-free and prevent the naturalregeneration of trees, the removal of these large herbivores through fencing has allowednatural forest regeneration in several small-scale experiments (see below). The visualsuccess of these initiatives has been embraced by the rewilding conservation movementand has led to increasingly vocal calls to 'rewild' the Scottish Highlands. Rewildinginitiatives often infer that there will be wider holistic benefits (e.g., Warner et al. 2021),however, confidence in the true benefits of rewilding, particularly biodiversity recoveryand C sequestration, is limited due to a lack of above and belowground data.While these rewilding initiatives likely increase above ground carbon storage by allowingtree growth, the overall change in ecosystem C storage also depends on the response ofthe largest C stock in terrestrial ecosystems: the soil C stock. Recent findings fromexperimental tree planting in the Scottish uplands suggests that while tree planting led toan accumulation of C aboveground, it simultaneously led to decrease in C sequestrationbelowground (Friggens et al. 2020), thereby cancelling out the aboveground benefits.Preliminary data from a rewilding initiative at Ben Lawers Nature reserve suggest that thisdecrease in soil C may also occur following the natural regeneration of trees.Furthermore, soils are globally the largest reservoir of biodiversity, hosting more than25% of the Planet's total biodiversity (Bardgett and van der Putten (2014). Holisticbenefits of rewilding on biodiversity thus largely depend on the response of the soil.There is thus an urgent need to carefully considering the response of the soil to rewilding.Can rewilding the Scottish Highlands increase ecosystem-scale carbon storage andbiodiversity, once the soil is considered?

野化越来越被认为是限制生物多样性持续下降和减缓气候变化的有力工具，因为它具有恢复生物多样性栖息地和增加生态系统规模碳储存的潜力。在苏格兰，大约。七百万只羊和一百万只鹿在没有捕食者的土地上吃草，并阻止了树木的自然再生，通过围栏清除这些大型食草动物使得天然林在几个小规模实验中得以再生（见下文）。这些举措在视觉上取得了成功，受到了野化保护运动的欢迎，并导致越来越多的人呼吁“野化”苏格兰高地。野化倡议通常推断会有更广泛的整体效益（例如，Warner et al. 2021），然而，由于缺乏地上和地下数据，人们对野化的真正效益（特别是生物多样性恢复和碳封存）的信心有限。野化举措可能会通过允许树木生长来增加地上碳储存，生态系统碳储存的总体变化还取决于陆地生态系统中最大碳储存的响应：土壤碳库。苏格兰高地植树实验的最新发现表明，虽然植树导致地上碳积累，但同时导致地下碳固存减少（Friggens 等人，2020），从而抵消了地上效益。来自野化计划的初步数据本·劳尔斯自然保护区的研究表明，土壤碳的减少也可能发生在树木自然更新之后。此外，土壤是全球最大的水库生物多样性，占地球总生物多样性的 25% 以上（Bardgett 和 van der Putten (2014)）。因此，野化对生物多样性的整体效益在很大程度上取决于土壤的反应。因此，迫切需要仔细考虑土壤的反应一旦考虑到土壤，苏格兰高地的野化能否增加生态系统规模的碳储存和生物多样性？