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| Submitter's Name |
Carlos Quintero |
| Session Name |
Poster Session - Wetlands |
| Poster Number |
58 |
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| Author(s) |
Carlos Quintero, Soil and Water Sciences (Presenting Author) |
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Matthew Cohen,
School of Forest Resources and Conservation |
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Seasonal Carbon Fluxes in a Patterned Karst Wetland and Implications of Hydrology on Basin Expansion in Big Cypress National Preserve |
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Patterned Wetland Depressions are ubiquitous in the sub-tropical low relief limestone landscape of South West Florida. These bowl shaped wetland depressions are typically home to dense cypress communities that thrive on the prolonged hydroperiods and deep carbon rich soils near their centers with Saw Palmetto and South Florida Slash Pine populating the adjacent uplands. The underlying limestone bedrock is highly susceptible to chemical weathering by carbonic acid, which forms when CO2 and H20 interact. To test the hypothesis that scale dependent feedbacks operate in this environment to regulate basin expansion and to evaluate the effects of hydroperiod on soil respiration and storage we studied 3 separate wetland depressions within the preserve. First we outfitted our wetlands of interest with water level loggers which informed us of hydrologic conditions within our sites. Some depression centers remain inundated throughout the year while others dry out completely. Second we coupled our hydrologic data with DEMs obtained from LiDAR surveys of our domes. Hydroperiods in depression centers are much longer than those of the adjacent uplands. Finally we sampled soil respiration rates using a LICOR LI-6400 outfitted with a soil respiration chamber periodically throughout the year and collected measures of carbon content and soil depth within our domes. Efflux rates are typically higher near the centers of depression features and vary as a function of stage and distance from feature center. We found evidence to support the hypothesis that scale dependent feedbacks operate on this landscape to grow wetland landscape features. The presence of scale dependent feedbacks acting upon this landscape add to the growing body of work on patterned landscapes and biotically mediated karst formation. |
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