Estimation of Soil Organic Carbon Storage in Palustrine Wetlands, China

Wetlands regulate the balance of global organic carbon. Small changes in the carbon stocks of wetland ecosystem play a crucial role in the regional soil carbon cycle. However, an accurate estimation of carbon stocks is still be debated for China’s wetlands ecosystem due to the limitation of data collection and methodology. Here, we investigate the soil organic carbon (SOC) storage in a 1-m depth in China’s palustrine wetlands. A total of 1383 sample data were collected from palustrine wetlands in China. The data sources are divided into three parts, respectively, data collection from published literature, data from books, and actual measurement data of sample points. The results demonstrate that there is considerable SOC storage in China’s palustrine wetlands (9.945 Pg C), primarily abundant in the northeast, northwest arid and semi-arid as well as Qinghai-Tibet Plateau regions. The SOC density in per unit area soil was higher in the wetland area of northeast, southwest and Qinghai-Tibet plateau. Within China terrestrial scale, the temperature and precipitation differences caused by latitude were the main environmental factors affecting the organic carbon content. Furthermore, except for the southeast and south wetland region, SOC content decreased with depth.