Publication Date:
2023-11-30
Description:
In groundwater-fed fen peatlands, the surface biomass decays rapidly and, as a result, highly humified peat is formed. A high degree of humification constrains palaeoecological studies because reliable identification of plant remains is hampered. Organic geochemistry techniques as a means of identifying historical plant communities have been successfully applied tobog peat. The method has also been applied to fen peat, but without reference to the composition of fen plants. We have applied selected organic geochemistry methods to determine the composition of the neutral lipid fractions from 12 living fen plants, to investigate the potential for the distributions to characterize and separate different fen plants and plant groups. Our results show correspondence with previous studies, e.g. C23 and C25n-alkanes dominating Sphagnum spp. and C27 to C31 alkanes dominating vascular plants. However, we also found similarities in n-alkane distributions between Sphagnum spp. and the below ground parts of some vascular plants. We tested the efficiency of different n-alkane ratios to separate species and plant groups. The ratios used for bog studies (e.g. n-C23/n-C25 and n-C23/n-C29) did not work as consistently for fen plants. Some differences in sterol distribution were found between vascular plants and mosses; in general vascular plants had a higher concentration of sterols. When distributions of n-alkanes, n-alkane ratios and sterols were all included as variables, redundancy analysis (RDA) separated different plant groups into their own clusters. Our results imply that the pattern for bog biomarkers cannot directly be applied to fen environments. Nevertheless, they encourage further testing to determine whether or not the identification of plant groups, plants or plant parts from highly humified peat is possible by applying fen species-specific biomarker proxies.
Keywords:
24-Ethylcholest-5-en-3beta-ol; 24-Methylcholest-5-en-3beta-ol; 24-Methylcholest-7-en-3b-ol; 24-Methylcholesta-5,22E-dien-3beta-ol; 24-Methylene-cycloartenol; 3-Stimastanol; Agnosterol; Avenasterol; beta-Amyrin; Cholesterol; Cycloartenol; delta-Tocopherol; Ergost-8,24(28)-dien-3b-ol; Finland; Finn_plants; gamma-Tocopherol; Gramisterol; HAND; Lanosterol; Lupeol; n-Alcohol C12; n-Alcohol C13; n-Alcohol C14; n-Alcohol C15; n-Alcohol C16; n-Alcohol C17; n-Alcohol C18; n-Alcohol C19; n-Alcohol C20; n-Alcohol C21; n-Alcohol C22; n-Alcohol C23; n-Alcohol C24; n-Alcohol C25; n-Alcohol C26; n-Alcohol C27; n-Alcohol C28; n-Alcohol C29; n-Alcohol C30; n-Alcohol C32; n-Alcohol C34; n-Alcohol C35; n-Alkane, C21/C23 ratio; n-Alkane, C23/(C23+C29) ratio; n-Alkane, C23/(C27+C31) ratio; n-Alkane, C23/C21 ratio; n-Alkane, C23/C25 ratio; n-Alkane, C23/C27 ratio; n-Alkane, C23/C29 ratio; n-Alkane, C23/C31 ratio; n-Alkane, C25/(C25+C29) ratio; n-Alkane, C25/C21 ratio; n-Alkane, C25/C23 ratio; n-Alkane, C25/C29 ratio; n-Alkane, C31/C27 ratio; n-Alkane, C31/C29 ratio; n-Alkane, C33/C31 ratio; n-Alkane C17; n-Alkane C18; n-Alkane C19; n-Alkane C20; n-Alkane C21; n-Alkane C22; n-Alkane C23; n-Alkane C24; n-Alkane C25; n-Alkane C26; n-Alkane C27; n-Alkane C28; n-Alkane C29; n-Alkane C30; n-Alkane C31; n-Alkane C33; n-Alkane C35; Obtusifoliol; Phytol; Ratio; Sample type; Sampling by hand; Schottenol; Species; Squalene; Standard error; Sterols; Stigmasta-3,5-dien-7-one; Stigmasterol; Triterpenoids, plant-derived; Triterpenol
Type:
Dataset
Format:
text/tab-separated-values, 2596 data points
Permalink
