Globally, peatland ecosystems store tremendous amounts of C relative to their extent on the landscape, largely owing to saturated soils which limit decomposition. While there is still considerable uncertainty regarding CO 2 production potential below the water table in peatland ecosystems, extracellular Fe reduction has been suggested as a dominant pathway for anaerobic metabolism. However, colorimetric methods commonly used to quantitate Fe and partition between redox species are known to be unreliable in the presence of complex humic substances, which are common in peatland pore water. We evaluated both the standard o-phenanthroline (o-P) Method and an ionic liquid extraction (ILE) Method followed by quantitation with inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) to compare total Fe recovery and Fe 2+ /Fe 3+ ratios in four distinct peatland ecosystems, ranging from rich fen to bog. While total Fe concentrations measured with ILE and o-P were correlated, the ILE method proved to be superior in both total Fe quantitation and in separately quantifying ferric (Fe 3+ ) and ferrous (Fe 2+ ) iron. In peat pore water, the o-P Method underestimated Fe 3+ by as much as 100%. A multivariate approach utilizing fluorescenceand ultraviolet (UV)-visable (Vis) spectroscopy identified indices of dissolved organic matter (DOM) humification and redox status that correlated with poor performance of the o-P Method in peat pore water. Where these interferences are present, we suggest that site-specific empirical correction factors for quantitation of total Fe by o-P can be created from ILE of Fe, but recommend ILE for accurate appraisals of iron speciation and redox processes.Abbreviations: DI, deionized; DOC, dissolved organic carbon; DOM, dissolved organic matter; EEMs, excitation-emissions matrices; FI, fluorescence index; H p , index of humification; ICP-OES, inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry; ILE, ionic liquid extraction; o-P, o-phenanthroline; PARAFAC, parallel factor analysis; PCA, principal component analysis; RI, index of redox dissolved organic matter status; TEA, terminal electron acceptor; UV, ultraviolet; Vis, visible. P eatlands represent critical terrestrial C stores that are preserved by a combination of hypoxic and anoxic soil environments. These conditions present an energetic challenge for microbial consortia in anaerobic environments which utilize alternative (to oxygen) terminal electron acceptors (TEAs) during heterotrophic metabolism. In anaerobic conditions, microbes preferentially reduce several alternative TEAs for respiration, with thermodynamic yield declining in the order: NO 3 -, Mn 4+ , Fe 3+ , SO 4 2-, and ultimately CO 2 (see review by Megonigal et al., 2004). Although there is wide agreement that alternative TEA reduction is important for anaerobic decomposition, variation in the magnitudes of anaerobic CO 2 production across studies suggests that there is high variability in facultative and obligate anaerobic processes that occur below the water table (M...