A Letter article by Ecohydrology members Arash Rafat, Eunji Byun, Fereidoun Rezanezhad and Philippe Van Cappellen was published inEnvironmental Research Communications journal! In this study, the impact of alternative definitions of the non-growing season (NGS) for a peatland site with multiple years of CO2 flux records was analysed with defining three NGS climatic parameters: air temperature, soil temperature, and snow cover. The results show positive correlations between estimates of the cumulative NGS net ecosystem CO2 exchange (NGS-NEE) and the length of the NGS for each alternative definition, with the greatest proportion of variability explained using snow cover, followed by air temperature and soil temperature. This study highlights the need to explicitly define the NGS based on available climatic parameters to account for regional climate and ecosystem variability.
The open access paper can be found here.