Alpine regions' groundwater is crucial to the worldwide hydrological cycle. However, due to the harsh environmental conditions, the distribution and evolution characteristics await clarification. The study area was selected to be the Nagqu River Basin in the Nu-Salween River's source region. In 2019-2021, we gathered 88,000 monitoring data from nine observation wells and examined the spatiotemporal groundwater table changes in various permafrost zones and freeze- thaw cycles. During the freezing period, entirely frozen period, thawing period, and entirely thawed period, the groundwater table change rates in the permafrost zone were 2.14, 1.54, 1.55, and 2.01 times larger than in the seasonal frost zone, and fluctuation amplitudes were 1.97, 1.28, 1.01 and 1.31 times larger. The average groundwater table change rate and fluctuation amplitude were greatest during the entirely thawed period and lowest during the thawing period, with the maximum change rate reaching 3.64 cm/d during the entirely thawed period of 2019-2020 in the permafrost zone and the minimum change rate of 0.12 cm/d during the thawing period of 2019-2020 in the seasonal frost zone.

Wet alpine meadows generally act as a significant carbon sink, since their low rate of soil decomposition determines a much smaller ecosystem respiration (Re) than photosynthesis. However, it remains unclear whether the low soil decomposition rate is determined by low temperatures or by nearly-saturated soil moisture. We explored this issue by using five years of measurements from two eddy-covariance sites with low temperature and significantly different soil water conditions. The results showed that both sites were carbon sinks. However, despite a smaller annual gross primary productivity, the wet site with a shallow groundwater showed a much higher carbon use efficiency and larger carbon sink than the dry site (which had a deeper water table) due to its much lower Re. Our analyses showed that Re of the wet site was significantly decreased under the nearly-saturated soil condition during the unfrozen seasons. This effect of nearly-saturated soil water on Re increased with soil depths. In contrast, at the dry site the high soil water content favored Re. The corresponding soil temperature at both sites expectedly showed large and positive effects on Re. These results demonstrated that the high carbon sink of the wet alpine meadow was mainly caused by the inhibiting effects of the nearly-saturated soil condition on soil respiration rather than by the low temperatures. Therefore, we argue that a warming-induced shrinking cryosphere may affect the carbon dynamics of wet and cold ecosystems through changes in soil hydrology and its impact on soil respiration. In addition, our study highlights the different responses of soil respiration to warming across soil depths. The thawing of frozen soil may cause larger CO2 emission in the top soil, while it may also partially contribute to slowing down soil carbon decomposition in the deep soil through decreasing metabolic activity of aerobic organisms.

Polygonal peatlands are carbon-rich permafrost ecosystems that will likely be significantly affected by climate change. However, studies are often constrained to one measurement per day, which impedes assessments of the temporal variability in carbon fluxes. For this reason, we measured ecosystem respiration (ER) of CO2 in a polygonal peatland underlain by continuous permafrost over an entire growing season to determine the effects of temperature and water table depth on the temporal variability of ER. We used four automated closed chambers to measure ER under varying temperature and soil moisture regimes. Temporal variability was approximately the same for the four plots, on both a diurnal and a seasonal scale. Both diurnal and seasonal variations in ER were strongly controlled by changes in soil surface temperature. Fluctuations of the water table depth associated with important rainfall events was also an important factor affecting ER on the seasonal scale. We found that water table level fluctuations below 20-25 cm did not significantly affect ER and that most soil respiration took place in the top 10 cm, likely in the surface 2 cm. Our results highlight the importance of monitoring future changes in tundra hydrology, which will determine the depth of organic matter available for aerobic decomposition.

\ Northern peatlands have accumulated a large amount of organic carbon (C) in their thick peat profile. Climate change and associated variations in soil environments are expected to have significant impacts on the C balance of these ecosystems, but the magnitude is still highly uncertain. Verifying and understanding the influences of changes in environmental factors on C gas fluxes in biogeochemical models are essential for forecasting feedbacks between C gas fluxes and climate change. In this study, we applied a biogeochemical model, DeNitrification-DeComposition (DNDC), to assess impacts of air temperature (T-A) and water table (WT) on C gas fluxes in an Alaskan peatland. DNDC was validated against field measurements of net ecosystem exchange of CO2 (NEE) and CH4 fluxes under manipulated surface soil temperature and WT conditions in a moderate rich fen. The validation demonstrates that DNDC was able to capture the observed impacts of the manipulations in soil environments on C gas fluxes. To investigate responses of C gas fluxes to changes in T-A and soil water condition, we conducted a series of simulations with varying T-A and WT. The results demonstrate that (1) uptake rates of CO2 at the site were reduced by either too colder or warmer temperatures and generally increased with increasing soil moisture; (2) CH4 emissions showed an increasing trend as T-A increased or WT rose toward the peat surface; and (3) the site could shift from a net greenhouse gas (GHG) sink into a net GHG source under some warm and/or dry conditions. A sensitivity analysis evaluated the relative importance of T-A and WT to C gas fluxes. The results indicate that both T-A and WT played important roles in regulating NEE and CH4 emissions and that within the investigated ranges of the variations in T-A and WT, changes in WT showed a greater impact than changes in T-A on NEE, CH4 fluxes, and net C gas fluxes at the study fen.