Seawater carbonate chemistry, structural and chemical characteristics of the seagrass Thalassia testudinum in an situ CO2 enrichment experiment

DOI

Seagrasses commonly display carbon-limited photosynthetic rates. Thus, increases in atmospheric pCO2, and consequentially oceanic CO2(aq) concentrations, may prove beneficial. While addressed in mesocosms, these hypotheses have not been tested in the field with manipulative experimentation. This study examines the effects of in situ CO2(aq) enrichment on the structural and chemical characteristics of the tropical seagrass, Thalassia testudinum. CO2(aq) availability was manipulated for 6 months in clear, open-top chambers within a shallow seagrass meadow in the Florida Keys (USA), reproducing forecasts for the year 2100. Structural characteristics (leaf area, leaf growth, shoot mass, and shoot density) were unresponsive to CO2(aq) enrichment. However, leaf nitrogen and phosphorus content declined on average by 11 and 21 %, respectively. Belowground, non-structural carbohydrates increased by 29 %. These results indicate that increased CO2(aq) availability may primarily alter the chemical composition of seagrasses, influencing both the nutrient status and resilience of these systems.

In order to allow full comparability with other ocean acidification data sets, the R package seacarb (Lavigne and Gattuso, 2011) was used to compute a complete and consistent set of carbonate system variables, as described by Nisumaa et al. (2010). In this dataset the original values were archived in addition with the recalculated parameters (see related PI). The date of carbonate chemistry calculation by seacarb is 2013-12-10.

Supplement to: Campbell, Justin E; Fourqurean, James W (2013): Effects of in situ CO2 enrichment on the structural and chemical characteristics of the seagrass Thalassia testudinum. Marine Biology, 160(6), 1465-1475

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.824407
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-013-2199-3
Related Identifier https://cran.r-project.org/package=seacarb
Metadata Access https://ws.pangaea.de/oai/provider?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=datacite4&identifier=oai:pangaea.de:doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.824407
Provenance
Creator Campbell, Justin E; Fourqurean, James W ORCID logo
Publisher PANGAEA
Contributor Yang, Yan
Publication Year 2013
Rights Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
OpenAccess true
Representation
Resource Type Supplementary Dataset; Dataset
Format text/tab-separated-values
Size 960 data points
Discipline Earth System Research
Spatial Coverage (-81.750 LON, 24.550 LAT)
Temporal Coverage Begin 2009-07-01T00:00:00Z
Temporal Coverage End 2009-12-31T00:00:00Z