Plant traits and carbon storage in freshwater wetlands

Abstract

Freshwater wetlands are an important part of the global carbon cycle due to their role in sequestering carbon in the soil. Despite covering less than 8% of global land area, freshwater wetlands are significant reservoirs of soil carbon due to long-term storage in the soil. Soil carbon stocks are high because wetlands are highly productive and can have low rates of decomposition. Plant communities capture carbon during photosynthesis and deposit it as litter. My thesis broadly examines the influence of vegetation communities on soil carbon storage across a range of scales, from the landscape down to the leaf. To examine the relative contribution of vegetation to carbon stock on a landscape-..