Large-scale regionalization of water table depth in peatlands optimized for greenhouse gas emission upscaling

Bechtold, Michel; Tiemeyer, Bärbel; Laggner, Andreas; Leppelt, Thomas; Frahm, Enrico; Belting, Susanne

doi:10.5194/hessd-11-3857-2014

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…The intensive management could refer to peat mining (though marginal peat cutting was accepted), deep drainage, and other attempts to change the land use for more than 10–20 years. The monitoring well (for groundwater table depth sites) being perforated only over the first 1 or 2 m or with the perforated section of the tube ending within the peat layer. We emphasize that this criterion is particularly important because national authorities typically maintain only groundwater monitoring networks with monitoring wells that penetrate deeply and cut through the peat layer, producing observations that are not representative of the peat layer (Bechtold et al, ).…”

Section: Model Experimental Setupmentioning

confidence: 99%

PEAT‐CLSM: A Specific Treatment of Peatland Hydrology in the NASA Catchment Land Surface Model

Bechtold

Lannoy

Koster

et al. 2019

J Adv Model Earth Syst

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Peatlands are poorly represented in global Earth system modeling frameworks. Here we add a peatland-specific land surface hydrology module (PEAT-CLSM) to the Catchment Land Surface Model (CLSM) of the NASA Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) framework. The amended TOPMODEL approach of the original CLSM that uses topography characteristics to model catchment processes is discarded, and a peatland-specific model concept is realized in its place. To facilitate its utilization in operational GEOS efforts, PEAT-CLSM uses the basic structure of CLSM and the same global input data. Parameters used in PEAT-CLSM are based on literature data. A suite of CLSM and PEAT-CLSM simulations for peatland areas between 40°N and 75°N is presented and evaluated against a newly compiled data set of groundwater table depth and eddy covariance observations of latent and sensible heat fluxes in natural and seminatural peatlands. CLSM's simulated groundwater tables are too deep and variable, whereas PEAT-CLSM simulates a mean groundwater table depth of −0.20 m (snow-free unfrozen period) with moderate temporal fluctuations (standard deviation of 0.10 m), in significantly better agreement with in situ observations. Relative to an operational CLSM version that simply includes peat as a soil class, the temporal correlation coefficient is increased on average by 0.16 and reaches 0.64 for bogs and 0.66 for fens when driven with global atmospheric forcing data. In PEAT-CLSM, runoff is increased on average by 38% and evapotranspiration is reduced by 19%. The evapotranspiration reduction constitutes a significant improvement relative to eddy covariance measurements.Plain Language Summary Peatlands are wetlands in which plant matter has accumulated over thousands of years under almost permanently water-logged conditions. Alterations in these conditions as a result of global climate change can lead to the release of the huge peatland carbon pool as carbon dioxide over much shorter timescales than were required for accumulation. The additional emissions would amplify global warming. A better representation of the peatland hydrology in global Earth system models can help quantify how peatlands respond to a changing climate. In this paper, we add a peatland-specific land surface hydrology module to the land surface model used in NASA's GEOS Earth

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Section: Model Experimental Setupmentioning

confidence: 99%

PEAT‐CLSM: A Specific Treatment of Peatland Hydrology in the NASA Catchment Land Surface Model

Bechtold

Lannoy

Koster

et al. 2019

J Adv Model Earth Syst

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“…(2019) already suggested, a module for drained northern peatlands (PEATCLSM North,Drain ) is needed to accurately model the role of peatlands in the global water and carbon cycles. In this research, we showed that following the same approach as for natural peatlands, a PEATCLSM North,Drain module could be achieved by developing a separate parameter set for northern drained peatlands, though drainage and water management practices are very diverse (Bechtold et al., 2014).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tropical Peatland Hydrology Simulated With a Global Land Surface Model

Apers

Lannoy

Baird

et al. 2022

J Adv Model Earth Syst

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Tropical peatlands are among the most carbon-dense ecosystems on Earth, and their water storage dynamics strongly control these carbon stocks. The hydrological functioning of tropical peatlands differs from that of northern peatlands, which has not yet been accounted for in global land surface models (LSMs). Here, we integrated tropical peat-specific hydrology modules into a global LSM for the first time, by utilizing the peatland-specific model structure adaptation (PEATCLSM) of the NASA Catchment Land Surface Model (CLSM). We developed literature-based parameter sets for natural (PEATCLSM Trop,Nat ) and drained (PEATCLSM Trop,Drain ) tropical peatlands. Simulations with PEATCLSM Trop,Nat were compared against those with the default CLSM version and the northern version of PEATCLSM (PEATCLSM North,Nat ) with tropical vegetation input. All simulations were forced with global meteorological reanalysis input data for the major tropical peatland regions in Central and South America, the Congo Basin, and Southeast Asia. The evaluation against a unique and extensive data set of in situ water level and eddy covariance-derived evapotranspiration showed an overall improvement in bias and correlation compared to the default CLSM version. Over Southeast Asia, an additional simulation with PEATCLSM Trop,Drain was run to address the large fraction of drained tropical peatlands in this region. PEATCLSM Trop,Drain outperformed CLSM, PEATCLSM North,Nat , and PEATCLSM Trop,Nat over drained sites. Despite the overall improvements of PEATCLSM Trop,Nat over CLSM, there are strong differences in performance between the three study regions. We attribute these performance differences to regional differences in accuracy of meteorological forcing data, and differences in peatland hydrologic response that are not yet captured by our model. Plain Language SummaryTropical peatlands are wetlands in which plant material accumulates under waterlogged conditions and develops into a dense organic soil layer. Disturbance of their selfregulating hydrology by external factors such as artificial drainage, land use change, and climate change can quickly convert these immense carbon stocks into strong sources of greenhouse gases. Including the hydrology of tropical peatlands into global Earth system models allows us to understand the impact of such external disturbances. We developed the first hydrology modules for natural and drained tropical peatlands to plug into the NASA Goddard Earth Observing System modeling framework. Our results display strong regional differences, and indicate that the accuracy of our model is limited by rainfall data quality and by our understanding of how peatland hydrology differs across the three regions that contain the major tropical peatland areas (Central and South America, the Congo Basin, and Southeast Asia). Nonetheless, simulations

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Nitrous oxide emission hotspots from organic soils in Europe

Leppelt¹,

Dechow²,

Gebbert³

et al. 2014

Preprint

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Abstract. Organic soils are a main source of direct nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions, an important greenhouse gas (GHG). Observed N2O emissions from organic soils are highly variable in space and time which causes high uncertainties in national emission inventories. Those uncertainties could be reduced when relating the upscaling process to a priori identified key drivers by using available N2O observations from plot scale in empirical approaches. We used the empirical fuzzy modelling approach MODE to identify main drivers for N2O and utilize them to predict the spatial emission pattern of European organic soils. We conducted a meta study with a total amount of 659 annual N2O measurements which was used to derive separate models for different land use types. We applied our models to available, spatial explicit input driver maps to upscale N2O emissions on European level and compared the inventory with recently published IPCC emission factors. The final statistical models explained up to 60% of the N2O variance. Our study results showed that cropland and grasslands emitted the highest N2O fluxes 0.98 ± 1.08 and 0.58 ± 1.03 g N2O-N m−2 a−1, respectively. High fluxes from cropland sites were mainly controlled by low soil pH-value and deep drained groundwater tables. Grassland hotspot emissions were strongly related to high amount of N-fertilizer inputs and warmer winter temperatures. In contrast N2O fluxes from natural peatlands were predominantly low (0.07±0.27 g N2O-N m−2 a−1) and we found no relationship with the tested drivers. The total inventory for direct N2O emissions from organic soils in Europe amount up to 149.5 Gg N2O-N a−1, which included also fluxes from forest and peat extraction sites and exceeds the inventory calculated by IPCC emission factors of 87.4 Gg N2O-N a−1. N2O emissions from organic soils represent up to 13% of total European N2O emissions reported in the European Union (EU) greenhouse gas inventory of 2011 from only 7% of the EU area. Thereby the model demonstrated that with up to 85% the major part of the inventory is induced by anthropogenic management, which shows the significant reduction potential by rewetting and extensivation of agricultural used peat soils.

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Large-scale regionalization of water table depth in peatlands optimized for greenhouse gas emission upscaling

Cited by 3 publications

References 35 publications

PEAT‐CLSM: A Specific Treatment of Peatland Hydrology in the NASA Catchment Land Surface Model

PEAT‐CLSM: A Specific Treatment of Peatland Hydrology in the NASA Catchment Land Surface Model

Tropical Peatland Hydrology Simulated With a Global Land Surface Model

Nitrous oxide emission hotspots from organic soils in Europe

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