Regional variability in peatland burning at mid-to high-latitudes during the Holocene

Sim, Thomas G.; Swindles, Graeme; Morris, Paul J.; Baird, Andy J.; Gallego‐Sala, Angela; Wang, Yuwan; Blaauw, Maarten; Camill, Philip; Garneau, Michelle; Hardiman, Mark; Loisel, Julie; Väliranta, Minna; Anderson, L.; Apolinarska, Karina; Augustijns, Femke; Auniņa, Liene; Beaulne, Joannie; Bobek, Přemysl; Borken, Werner; Broothaerts, Nils; Cui, Qiaoyu; Davies, Marissa A.; Ejarque, Ana; Farrell, Michelle E.; Feeser, Ingo; Feurdean, Angelica; Fewster, Richard E.; Finkelstein, S. A.; Gaillard, Marie-José; Gałka, Mariusz; Heffernan, Liam; Hoevers, Renske; Jones, Miriam C.; Juselius-Rajamäki, Teemu; Karofeld, Edgar; Knorr, Klaus‐Holger; Korhola, Atte; Kupriyanov, Dmitri; Kylander, Malin E.; Lacourse, Terri; Lamentowicz, Mariusz; Lavoie, Martin; Lemdahl, Geoffrey; Łuców, Dominika; Magnan, Gabriel; Maksims, Alekss; Mansilla, Claudia A; Marcisz, Katarzyna; Marinova, Elena; Mathijssen, Paul; Mauquoy, Dmitri; Mazei, Yuri; Mazei, Natalia; McCarroll, Julia; McCulloch, Robert; Milner, Alice M.; Miras, Yannick; Mitchell, Fraser; Novenko, Elena Y; Pelletier, Nicolas; Peros, Matthew; Piilo, Sanna; Pilote, Louis‐Martin; Primeau, Guillaume; Rius, Damien; Robin, Vincent; Robitaille, Mylène; Roland, Thomas P.; Ryberg, Eleonor E.; Sannel, A. Britta K.; Schittek, Karsten; Vives, Gabriel Servera; Shotyk, William; Słowiński, Michał; Stivriņš, Normunds; Swinnen, Ward; Thompson, Gareth; Tiunov, Alexei V.; Tsyganov, Andrey N.; Tuittila, Eeva‐Stiina; Verstraeten, Gert; Wallenius, Tuomo; Webb, Julia C; Willard, Debra A.; Yu, Zicheng; Zaccone, Claudio; Zhang, Hui

doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2023.108020

Cited by 9 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 131 publications

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“…Under extreme drying conditions, S. fuscum can experience water stress and reduced GPP capacity (Harris et al, 2020). However, given that such bryophytes can be resistant and resilient under dry conditions (Sim et al, 2023) and the lowest recorded water table position in the mature bog was −53 cm, we found no evidence of reduced GPP in the mature bog due to drying induced vegetation damage.…”

Section: Our Results Show That Interannual Variability In Water Tablementioning

confidence: 59%

Changing climatic controls on the greenhouse gas balance of thermokarst bogs during succession after permafrost thaw

Heffernan,

Estop‐Aragonés,

Kuhn

et al. 2024

Global Change Biology

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Permafrost thaw in northern peatlands causes collapse of permafrost peat plateaus and thermokarst bog development, with potential impacts on atmospheric greenhouse gas exchange. Here, we measured methane and carbon dioxide fluxes over 3 years (including winters) using static chambers along two permafrost thaw transects in northwestern Canada, spanning young (~30 years since thaw), intermediate and mature thermokarst bogs (~200 years since thaw). Young bogs were wetter, warmer and had more hydrophilic vegetation than mature bogs. Methane emissions increased with wetness and soil temperature (40 cm depth) and modelled annual estimates were greatest in the young bog during the warmest year and lowest in the mature bog during the coolest year (21 and 7 g C‐CH4 m−2 year−1, respectively). The dominant control on net ecosystem exchange (NEE) in the mature bog (between +20 and −54 g C‐CO2 m−2 year−1) was soil temperature (5 cm), causing net CO2 loss due to higher ecosystem respiration (ER) in warmer years. In contrast, wetness controlled NEE in the young and intermediate bogs (between +55 and −95 g C‐CO2 m−2 year−1), where years with periodic inundation at the beginning of the growing season caused greater reduction in gross primary productivity than in ER leading to CO2 loss. Winter fluxes (November–April) represented 16% of annual ER and 38% of annual CH4 emissions. Our study found NEE of thermokarst bogs to be close to neutral and rules out large CO2 losses under current conditions. However, high CH4 emissions after thaw caused a positive net radiative forcing effect. While wet conditions favouring high CH4 emissions only persist for the initial young bog period, we showed that continued climate warming with increased ER, and thus, CO2 losses from the mature bog can cause net positive radiative forcing which would last for centuries after permafrost thaw.

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Section: Our Results Show That Interannual Variability In Water Tablementioning

confidence: 59%

Changing climatic controls on the greenhouse gas balance of thermokarst bogs during succession after permafrost thaw

Heffernan,

Estop‐Aragonés,

Kuhn

et al. 2024

Global Change Biology

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“…The occurrence of charcoal of all size fractions in every centimeter of the bog and lagoon cores, particularly at the bog where charcoal primarily resulted from atmospheric deposition, suggests that fires on the tombolo were frequent throughout the tombolo's history and that many were likely to have been surface fires that did not generate large charcoal peaks (Figure 4). In a recent global compilation of peatland charcoal records, nearly half of the samples contained no charcoal (Sim et al, 2023), so the consistent presence of charcoal in every centimeter of the Stockton Bog core suggests that such surface fires were frequent. This inference aligns with local Indigenous oral histories and fire‐scar research.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Paleoecology provides context for conserving culturally and ecologically important pine forest and barrens communities

Booth,

Schuurman,

Lynch

et al. 2023

Ecological Applications

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In fire‐prone ecosystems, knowledge of vegetation–fire–climate relationships and the history of fire suppression and Indigenous cultural burning can inform discussions of how to use fire as a management tool, particularly as climate continues to change rapidly. On Wiisaakodewan‐minis/Stockton Island in the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore of Wisconsin, USA, structural changes in a pine‐dominated natural area containing a globally rare barrens community occurred after the cessation of cultural burning by the Indigenous Ojibwe people and the imposition of fire‐suppression policies, leading to questions about the historical role of fire in this culturally and ecologically important area. To help understand better the ecological context needed to steward these pine forest and barrens communities, we developed palaeoecological records of vegetation, fire, and hydrological change using pollen, charcoal, and testate amoebae preserved in peat and sediment cores collected from bog and lagoon sediments within the pine‐dominated landscape. Results indicated that fire has been an integral part of Stockton Island ecology for at least 6000 years. Logging in the early 1900s led to persistent changes in island vegetation, and post‐logging fires of the 1920s and 1930s were anomalous in the context of the past millennium, likely reflecting more severe and/or extensive burning than in the past. Before that, the composition and structure of pine forest and barrens had changed little, perhaps due to regular low‐severity surface fires, which may have occurred with a frequency consistent with Indigenous oral histories (~4–8 years). Higher severity fire episodes, indicated by large charcoal peaks above background levels in the records, occurred predominantly during droughts, suggesting that more frequent or more intense droughts in the future may increase fire frequency and severity. The persistence of pine forest and barrens vegetation through past periods of climatic change indicates considerable ecological resistance and resilience. Future persistence in the face of climate changes outside this historical range of variability may depend in part on returning fire to these systems.

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“…1 cm 3 subsamples of the basal peat layer from peat cores were studied with stereomicroscope. Two charcoal size classes were used: small charcoal particles with a diameter <1 mm and large charcoal with diameter ≥1 mm with the assumption that microcharcoal records ≥1 mm represent local scale fires either in situ or within a few 100 m from the study site (Carcaillet et al., 2001; Sim et al., 2023). Up to 100 charcoal pieces for each charcoal size class were counted.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The ongoing lateral expansion of peatlands in Finland

Juselius‐Rajamäki,

Väliranta,

Korhola

2023

Global Change Biology

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Peatlands are the most dense terrestrial carbon stock and since the last glacial epoch northern peatlands have accumulated between 400 and 1000 Gt of carbon. Although the horizontal development history of the peatlands during the Holocene has been previously researched, these studies have overlooked the current peatland margins. This has led to a long‐standing view that the lateral expansion of the peatlands has halted or significantly slowed down. However, no concentrated effort focusing on the recent development of the peatland margins has been conducted. To fulfil this knowledge gap, we studied the development of peatland margins in five Finnish peatlands. In addition, we studied the effect of peatland subsoil characteristics and past forest fires on the peatland expansion. We sampled 15 transects with a total of 47 peat cores utilizing 14C radiocarbon dating on the basal layers of these peat cores. Our results show that the Northern peatlands are still expanding with four of our study sites having recent, post‐1950's basal ages in the peatland margins. In addition, the rate of peatland lateral expansion has increased during the last 1500 years in our study sites, challenging the current knowledge of the recent peatland expansion dynamics. We recorded lateral expansion rates of 0.1–6.4 cm/year from the sites studied. The rate of lateral expansion was restricted by local characteristics, especially the steepness of subsoil (p = .0108). Forest fires likely played an important role as the trigger for lateral expansion in southern study sites with large number of charcoal found at the basal layer of the peat cores. Depending on the scope of this recent lateral expansion across the vast northern peatlands, the effect on the carbon balance could be significant and should be taken into account when estimating the development of carbon pools in these crucial ecosystems.

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Regional variability in peatland burning at mid-to high-latitudes during the Holocene

Cited by 9 publications

References 131 publications

Changing climatic controls on the greenhouse gas balance of thermokarst bogs during succession after permafrost thaw

Changing climatic controls on the greenhouse gas balance of thermokarst bogs during succession after permafrost thaw

Paleoecology provides context for conserving culturally and ecologically important pine forest and barrens communities

The ongoing lateral expansion of peatlands in Finland

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