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SPRUCE Peat Physical and Chemical Characteristics from Experimental Plot Cores, Select Pre-Treatment 2012 and Post-Treatment 2020-21

Description

This data set reports the results of physical and chemical analyses of peat core samples from the SPRUCE experimental study plots located in the S1-Bog after 5 full years of warming and elevated CO2 treatments in August 2020 and May 2021. Also included are select pre-treatment conditions data from the August 2012 dataset (Iversen et al. 2014) duplicated here for continuity and ease of access.

In 2020 and 2021, a team of SPRUCE investigators and collaborators collected core samples of peat in SPRUCE experimental plots. The goal was to characterize the biological, physical, and chemical characteristics of peat after 5-years of treatment applications to enable a discussion of how those characteristics changed throughout the depth profile of the bog in response to experimental warming and CO2 treatments.

Peat sampling and analytical methods were similar to those described for pretreatment samples (Iversen et al. 2014) with the exception that the original 0-10 cm depth increment for hollows was split into a 0-5 cm and a 5-10 cm depth increments to better characterize changes in the shallowest peat layer (0-5 cm representative of mostly live Sphagnum tissues) and the uppermost layer of decomposing peat (5-10 cm).  The separation of the original surface layer into two distinct increments was done to allow more specific spatial and temporal evaluation of changing physical characteristics and the incorporation of new 13C and 14C isotopic signatures associated with the SPRUCE eCO2 treatments (Hanson et al. 2017).

A single high mineral content (i.e., non-peat) sample from Plot 8 collected below a depth of 175 cm was not included in this data set. 

Post-treatment cores were collected from 10 experimental plots (Plots 4, 6, 8, 10, 11, 13, 16, 17,19 and 20) and two ambient plots (Plots 7 and 21).  Samples were collected from hollow surfaces to depths of 200 cm in defined increments. The coring locations within each plot were mapped.

This data set contains one file in comma-separated (*.csv) format.

Citation

Phillips, J.R., P.J. Hanson, K.J. McFarlane and SPRUCE Project Participants. 2022. SPRUCE Peat Physical and Chemical Characteristics from Experimental Plot Cores, Select Pre-Treatment 2012 and Post-treatment 2020-2021. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, TES SFA, U.S. Department of Energy, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, U.S.A.  https://doi.org/10.25581/spruce.102/1878603.

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Posted

Friday, November 4, 2022

SPRUCE ID: spruce.102

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A peat core is cut into 10-cm sections.

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