Data from: Constraining the role of early land plants in Early Palaeozoic weathering and global cooling
| Main Authors: | Quirk, Joe, Leake, Jonathan R., Johnson, David A., Taylor, Lyla L., Saccone, Loredana, Beerling, David J. |
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| Format: | info dataset Journal |
| Terbitan: |
, 2015
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: |
https://zenodo.org/record/4999333 |
Daftar Isi:
- How the colonization of terrestrial environments by early land plants over 400 Ma influenced rock weathering, the biogeochemical cycling of carbon and phosphorus, and climate in the Palaeozoic is uncertain. Here we show experimentally that mineral weathering by liverworts—an extant lineage of early land plants—partnering arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi, like those in 410 Ma-old early land plant fossils, amplified calcium weathering from basalt grains threefold to sevenfold, relative to plant-free controls. Phosphate weathering by mycorrhizal liverworts was amplified 9–13-fold over plant-free controls, compared with fivefold to sevenfold amplification by liverworts lacking fungal symbionts. Etching and trenching of phyllosilicate minerals increased with AM fungal network size and atmospheric CO2 concentration. Integration of grain-scale weathering rates over the depths of liverwort rhizoids and mycelia (0.1 m), or tree roots and mycelia (0.75 m), indicate early land plants with shallow anchorage systems were probably at least 10-fold less effective at enhancing the total weathering flux than later-evolving trees. This work challenges the suggestion that early land plants significantly enhanced total weathering and land-to-ocean fluxes of calcium and phosphorus, which have been proposed as a trigger for transient dramatic atmospheric CO2 sequestration and glaciations in the Ordovician.
- Quirk_early_land_plant_weathering_PRSB_DataThe data file is an Excel document consisting of 11 worksheets numbered (1) – (11). The data supporting the paper are brought together from two separate controlled-environment experiments and from various literature sources. The experimental data come from the new experiments with liverworts conducted for this study, and from an earlier experiment with trees under comparable environmental and experimental conditions reported previously by Quirk et al. 2014 (Biology letters, 10, DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2014.0375). The data are also drawn from literature sources used to calculate and compare rates of weathering by lichens and mosses. The worksheets are ordered to correspond with the order that results are presented in the elements of each figure of the main paper. The underpinning data and calculations or conversions used to obtain and compare the results are presented in the relevant worksheets, with calculation steps clearly shown. Numbers in parenthesis in the column headings of worksheet (3), which corresponds to figure 3a, refer to the corresponding numbered worksheets containing the separate datasets (individual box-plot bars) used to construct the figure panel.