Universität zu Köln

Berger, Sina, Bliefernicht, Jan, Linstaedter, Anja, Canak, Kristijan, Guug, Samuel, Heinzeller, Dominikus ORCID: 0000-0003-2962-1049, Hingerl, Luitpold, Mauder, Matthias ORCID: 0000-0002-8789-163X, Neidl, Frank, Quansah, Emmanuel, Salack, Seyni, Steinbrecher, Rainer and Kunstmann, Harald ORCID: 0000-0001-9573-1743 (2019). The impact of rain events on CO2 emissions from contrasting land use systems in semi-arid West African savannas. Sci. Total Environ., 647. S. 1478 - 1490. AMSTERDAM: ELSEVIER. ISSN 1879-1026

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Abstract

In the future the Sudanian savanna - one of West Africa's high-potential bread baskets - will likely face shorter rainy seasons with more extreme rains and droughts. That could have serious impacts on the vegetation and its carbon dioxide (CO2) exchange with potentially increasing CO2 emissions accelerating climate warming. Understanding how the CO2 fluxes in this area respond to environmental variables, in particular rain events, is essential, but available data are scarce. In this study, we monitored net ecosystem exchange (NEE) of CO2, rainfall and other environmental parameters during four years at three savannas. Savannas were characterized by different vegetation due to different land use: i) woody and nearly pristine, ii) mixture of cropland and grassland and iii) intensive grazing. The impact of rain events on CO2 exchange for these contrasting ecosystems were analyzed for single rain events (short-term) and on a yearly time scale (long-term) using three eddy covariance towers. We found that the woody pristine savanna site was a prominent sink of CO2 (-864 to -1299 g CO2 m(-2) y(-1)) while the degraded sites were net CO2 sources (118 to 605 g CO2 m(-2) y(-1)) with a complicated relation with annual rainfall amounts. The NEE responses to single rain events revealed that daytime rain systematically decreased the sink strengths at all sites, which might be associated with decreased light availability. At the degraded sites, additional factors increasing CO2 losses were rain duration and dry spell length. The observed patterns of immediate CO2 flux responses to rainfall at differently used savannas indicate strong internal feed-backs between vegetation and land use changes and raise the question whether the CO2 sink strengths might be overestimated with possible implications for global CO2 budgets. Sustainable adaptation strategies need to be developed for West Africa. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID ORCID Put Code Berger, Sina UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED Bliefernicht, Jan UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED Linstaedter, Anja UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED Canak, Kristijan UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED Guug, Samuel UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED Heinzeller, Dominikus UNSPECIFIED orcid.org/0000-0003-2962-1049 UNSPECIFIED Hingerl, Luitpold UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED Mauder, Matthias UNSPECIFIED orcid.org/0000-0002-8789-163X UNSPECIFIED Neidl, Frank UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED Quansah, Emmanuel UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED Salack, Seyni UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED Steinbrecher, Rainer UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED Kunstmann, Harald UNSPECIFIED orcid.org/0000-0001-9573-1743 UNSPECIFIED
URN:	urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-159387
DOI:	10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.07.397
Journal or Publication Title:	Sci. Total Environ.
Volume:	647
Page Range:	S. 1478 - 1490
Date:	2019
Publisher:	ELSEVIER
Place of Publication:	AMSTERDAM
ISSN:	1879-1026
Language:	English
Faculty:	Unspecified
Divisions:	Unspecified
Subjects:	no entry
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Keywords Language NAZINGA GAME RANCH; BURKINA-FASO; ECOSYSTEM RESPIRATION; CLIMATE VARIABILITY; SOIL-MOISTURE; GAS-EXCHANGE; CARBON; PRODUCTIVITY; FLUXES; GRASSLAND Multiple languages Environmental Sciences Multiple languages
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/15938