Carbon-Nitrogen-Sulfur fluxes in Australian wetlands

Australian wetlands are facing new and extreme threats due to climate change, land use, and other human interventions. These changes can increase variations in nutrients cycle dynamics, thus driving various ecosystem processes that can affect vegetation growth, soil respiration, and greenhouse gas emissions quantity and quality. To gain more fundamental knowledge and understand how nutrient turnover in wetlands is affected, we developed and deployed the BAMS4 biogeochemical model of carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and sulfur (S) cycles (Figure 1) at 0.25×0.25 degree spatial resolution across wetlands in Australia. The BAMS4 is an evolution of the BAMS3 reaction network described in our earlier works and is implemented in BRTSim. Our assessment accounts for agricultural runoff (Figure 3) and total atmospheric deposition of C, N, and S. We estimated nutrient inputs to soil, elemental nutrient fluxes across the soil organic and mineral pools, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in different climatic areas. Figure 2 represents CH₄ and N₂O emissions rates. More details on nutrient flux partitioning in soil can be found in PUBLICATIONS.

Figure 1.

Figure 2.