Geology topics

Stephen Robinson

Publications and source records attributed to Stephen Robinson.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

USGS2018

Latitudinal limits to the predicted increase of the peatland carbon sink with warming

The carbon sink potential of peatlands depends on the balance of carbon uptake by plants and microbial decomposition. The rates of both these processes will increase with warming but it remains unclear which will dominate the global peatland response. Here we examine the global relationship between peatland carbon accumulation rates during the last millennium and planetary-scale climate space. A positive relationship is found between carbon accumulation and cumulative photosynthetically active radiation during the growing season for mid- to high-latitude peatlands in both hemispheres. However, this relationship reverses at lower latitudes, suggesting that carbon accumulation is lower under the warmest climate regimes. Projections under Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP)2.6 and RCP8.5 scenarios indicate that the present-day global sink will increase slightly until around AD 2100 but decline thereafter. Peatlands will remain a carbon sink in the future, but their response to warming switches from a negative to a positive climate feedback (decreased carbon sink with warming) at the end of the twenty-first century.

Nature Climate Change↗

USGS2014

A database and synthesis of northern peatland soil properties and Holocene carbon and nitrogen accumulation

Here, we present results from the most comprehensive compilation of Holocene peat soil properties with associated carbon and nitrogen accumulation rates for northern peatlands. Our database consists of 268 peat cores from 215 sites located north of 45°N. It encompasses regions within which peat carbon data have only recently become available, such as the West Siberia Lowlands, the Hudson Bay Lowlands, Kamchatka in Far East Russia, and the Tibetan Plateau. For all northern peatlands, carbon content in organic matter was estimated at 42 ± 3% (standard deviation) for Sphagnum peat, 51 ± 2% for non- Sphagnum peat, and at 49 ± 2% overall. Dry bulk density averaged 0.12 ± 0.07 g/cm 3 , organic matter bulk density averaged 0.11 ± 0.05 g/cm 3 , and total carbon content in peat averaged 47 ± 6%. In general, large differences were found between Sphagnum and non- Sphagnum peat types in terms of peat properties. Time-weighted peat carbon accumulation rates averaged 23 ± 2 (standard error of mean) g C/m 2 /yr during the Holocene on the basis of 151 peat cores from 127 sites, with the highest rates of carbon accumulation (25–28 g C/m 2 /yr) recorded during the early Holocene when the climate was warmer than the present. Furthermore, we estimate the northern peatland carbon and nitrogen pools at 436 and 10 gigatons, respectively. The database is publicly available at https://peatlands.lehigh.edu .

The Holocene↗

USGS1986

Improved method for correlating late Pleistocene/Holocene records from the Bering Sea: Application of a biosiliceous/geochemical stratigraphy

The combination of high-resolution siliceous biostratigraphy and radiocarbon dating provides a mechanism for detailed assessment of the depositional history in late Pleistocene sediments from the Bering Sea where average accumulation rates are uncharacteristically high compared to rates calculated for most other ocean basins. Vital to the development of this stratigraphy was the recognition that the abundance pattern of the radiolarian species Cycladophora davisiana in Bering Sea cores is quite similar to this species' previously correlated abundance curve in a late Pleistocene/Holocene record from the northwest Pacific. Comparison of this high-resolution stratigraphy with other recently developed floral and lithologic stratigraphies for late Pleistocene Bering Sea sediments shows that the various stratigraphies do not always yield identical results when applied to a particular sediment sequence. With this new stratigraphy based upon a combination of siliceous microfaunal abundance patterns and radiocarbon dating, one can identify reworking, discontinuities and other interruptions in the depositional sequence more precisely than with previously devised stratigraphies, thereby improving the correlation techniques for comparison of late Pleistocene/Holocene records from this marginal sea.

Deep Sea Research Part A, Oceanographic Research P↗