Page 102 - Microbial methane cycling in a warming world From biosphere to atmosphere Michiel H in t Zandt

Chapter 5. Early Holocene carbon storage and microbial activity in North Sea peats
(Vink et al. 2007). During the Early Holocene, GIA resulted in subsidence and, combined with rapid melting of global ice sheets, high rates of sea-level rise, up to 1-2 cm yr-1 (Hijma and Cohen 2019), giving rise to peatland development and later peatland submersion. As a result, former freshwater peatland ecosystems, preserved as a stiff peat layer (basal-peat), became submerged marine ecosystems at the base of the Early Holocene sequence.
Sea water
Marine sands
Buried
Post-glacial clay deposits
organic carbon
Submerged & compressed
CH4 [methanogenesis] peat
Pleistocene sands
Vegetation

Active peatland
CH4 [methanotrophy]
Organic carbon
Peat layers
CH4 [methanogenesis]
Pleistocene sands
Rising groundwater levels
Land surface
Mineral soil horizons
Pleistocene land surface (period of fluctuating climates)
Pleistocene-Holocene transition (climate warming, glacier melt, rising sea levels, paludification)
North Sea basin (human-induced climate warming, rising sea levels)
Figure 1. Peats submerged beneath the North Sea region of study. A) schematic of the evolution of processes that led to the conversion from the Pleistocene land surface to the buried marine peat sediments as they occur today. B) the location of the sampling area within the context of Western Europe. C) the distribution of sites within this sampling area.
100