Peatland hydrology and carbon release: why small-scale process matters

Abstract

Peatlands cover over 400 million hectares of the Earth's surface and store between onethird and one-half of the world's soil carbon pool. The long-term ability of peatlands to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere means that they play a major role in moderating global climate. Peatlands can also either attenuate or accentuate flooding. Changing climate or management can alter peatland hydrological processes and pathways for water movement across and below the peat surface. It is the movement of water in peats that drives carbon storage and flux. These small-scale processes can have global impacts through exacerbated terrestrial carbon release. This paper will describe advances in understanding environmental processes operating in peatlands. Recent (and future) advances in high-resolution topographic data collection and hydrological modelling provide an insight into the spatial impacts of land management and climate change in peatlands. Nevertheless, there are still some major challenges for future research. These include the problem that impacts of disturbance in peat can be irreversible, at least on human time-scales. This has implications for the perceived success and understanding of peatland restoration strategies. In some circumstances, peatland restoration may lead to exacerbated carbon loss. This will also be important if we decide to start to create peatlands in order to counter the threat from enhanced atmospheric carbon.

Fighting carbon loss of degraded peatlands by jump-starting ecosystem functioning with ecological restoration

“…Hydrologic factors like water level fluctuations and water chemistry largely regulate the development of peatland plant communities (Glaser et al 1990). They also control the accumulation and decomposition of peat and consequently the fluxes of C as CO2, CH4 and DOC in peatlands (Moore and Knowles 1989, Tranvik and Jansson 2002, Holden 2005, Jungkunst and Fiedler 2007. On the other hand, changes in these important peatland ecosystem functions are closely related to the characteristics of peatland plant communities (Ward et al 2013).…”

Influences of natural and anthropogenic factors on surface and groundwater quality in rural and urban areas

“…Hooda et al 2000;Lovell and Sullivan 2006). Of these pollutants, dissolved organic carbon (Freeman et al 2001;Holden 2005;Wallage et al 2006), nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) (Heathwaite et al 1996;Haygarth and Jarvis 2002;Dorioz et al 2006) and pesticides (Environment Agency 1999; Blanchoud et al 2007;Garrod et al 2007) are the most important issues for some land-owning UK water utilities due to the need to remove them from raw water to meet regulatory standards.…”

Comparing regional and supra-regional transfer functions for palaeohydrological reconstruction from Holocene peatlands

“…Peatland water table response to changes in climate is complex and dependant on a number of variables including, but not limited to; hydraulic conductivity, peat mass, porosity, dry bulk density, water table height, bog surface height, decay rate, underlying substrate and lateral extent (Baird et al, 2008;Baird et al, 2011;Frolking et al, 2010;Holden, 2005;Morris et al, 2011). There has recently been a concerted effort to improve the understanding of raised bog hydrological response to climatic factors through manipulation of a peatland development model (Swindles et al, submitted …”