Abstract. An experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of seasonally asymmetric warming on CO2, CH4, and N2O fluxes in alpine grassland of Tianshan Mountains of Central Asia, from October 2016 to September 2019. Our results indicated that the CO2, CH4 and N2O fluxes varied in the range 0.56–98.03 mg C m−2 h−1, −94.30–0.23 μg C m−2 h−1, and −1.28–10.09 μg N m−2 h−1, respectively. The CO2 and N2O fluxes were negatively correlated with soil temperature, but the CH4 fluxes decreased with the increase in temperature. Furthermore, the variation in greenhouse gas flux under seasonally asymmetric warming was different between the growing season (June to September) and the non-growing season (October to May). In addition, the response rates of CO2 and N2O fluxes to temperature increases was significantly reduced due to warming throughout the year. Warming during the growing season led to a significant decrease in the response rate of CO2 flux to temperature increases. However, warming during the non-growing season caused a significant increase in the response rate of CO2 flux to temperature increases. The response rate of CH4 flux was insensitive to temperature increase under seasonally asymmetric warming. Thus, the main finding of our results was that seasonally asymmetric warming resulted in different responses in the fluxes of individual greenhouse gases to rising temperatures in the alpine grassland.
Comparison of Soil Greenhouse Gas Fluxes during the Spring Freeze–Thaw Period and the Growing Season in a Temperate Broadleaved Korean Pine Forest, Changbai Mountains, China
