Rewetting global wetlands effectively reduces major greenhouse gas emissions

Zou, Jialin; Ziegler, Alan D.; Chen, Deliang; McNicol, Gavin; Ciais, Philippe; Jiang, Xin; Chen, Kewei; Wu, Jie; Jin, Wanqin; Lin, Ziyu; He, Xinyue; Brown, Lee E.; Holden, Joseph; Zhang, Zuotai; Ramchunder, Sorain J.; Chen, Anping; Zeng, Zhenzhong

doi:10.1038/s41561-022-00989-0

Cited by 79 publications

(52 citation statements)

References 74 publications

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“…The PPR is intensively used for agricultural crop and biofuels production, which has led to extensive wetland drainage and upland conversion from prairie grassland to cropland ( 16 ). Drainage reduces CH 4 emissions and soil organic carbon stocks but increases CO 2 and nitrous oxide (N 2 O) emissions ( 22 , 67 ). Upland conversion from grassland to cropland can affect CH 4 emissions indirectly through increased nutrient loading, resulting in increased CH 4 emissions ( 38 ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Large increases in methane emissions expected from North America’s largest wetland complex

et al. 2023

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Natural methane (CH 4 ) emissions from aquatic ecosystems may rise because of human-induced climate warming, although the magnitude of increase is highly uncertain. Using an exceptionally large CH 4 flux dataset (~19,000 chamber measurements) and remotely sensed information, we modeled plot- and landscape-scale wetland CH 4 emissions from the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR), North America’s largest wetland complex. Plot-scale CH 4 emissions were driven by hydrology, temperature, vegetation, and wetland size. Historically, landscape-scale PPR wetland CH 4 emissions were largely dependent on total wetland extent. However, regardless of future wetland extent, PPR CH 4 emissions are predicted to increase by two- or threefold by 2100 under moderate or severe warming scenarios, respectively. Our findings suggest that international efforts to decrease atmospheric CH 4 concentrations should jointly account for anthropogenic and natural emissions to maintain climate mitigation targets to the end of the century.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Large increases in methane emissions expected from North America’s largest wetland complex

et al. 2023

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“…However, given that ref. 48 incorporated the same chamber studies used to derive the IPCC Tier 1 EF, we believe that it may have overestimated rates of CO 2 loss from tropical peatlands for the same reasons noted above. Using our EFs, net GHG emissions from Acacia plantations on peat in Indonesia are calculated to be 20 Mt CO 2 -eq year −1 (based on the area of Acacia plantation on peat in Indonesia, 1.12 × 10 6 ha (ref.…”

Section: Articlementioning

confidence: 99%

Net greenhouse gas balance of fibre wood plantation on peat in Indonesia

Deshmukh¹,

Susanto²,

Nardi³

et al. 2023

Nature

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Tropical peatlands cycle and store large amounts of carbon in their soil and biomass1–5. Climate and land-use change alters greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes of tropical peatlands, but the magnitude of these changes remains highly uncertain6–19. Here we measure net ecosystem exchanges of carbon dioxide, methane and soil nitrous oxide fluxes between October 2016 and May 2022 from Acacia crassicarpa plantation, degraded forest and intact forest within the same peat landscape, representing land-cover-change trajectories in Sumatra, Indonesia. This allows us to present a full plantation rotation GHG flux balance in a fibre wood plantation on peatland. We find that the Acacia plantation has lower GHG emissions than the degraded site with a similar average groundwater level (GWL), despite more intensive land use. The GHG emissions from the Acacia plantation over a full plantation rotation (35.2 ± 4.7 tCO2-eq ha−1 year−1, average ± standard deviation) were around two times higher than those from the intact forest (20.3 ± 3.7 tCO2-eq ha−1 year−1), but only half of the current Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Tier 1 emission factor (EF)20 for this land use. Our results can help to reduce the uncertainty in GHG emissions estimates, provide an estimate of the impact of land-use change on tropical peat and develop science-based peatland management practices as nature-based climate solutions.

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“…In order to have a more precise estimate of greenhouse gas emissions, future studies should take into account emissions of other compounds, such as methane and nitrous oxides. In fact, having shallower WTD as the only optimization goal may not be desirable due to increased methane emissions (Teh et al, 2017;Wong et al, 2018;Planas-Clarke et al, 2020;Deshmukh et al, 2020Deshmukh et al, , 2021Kiuru et al, 2022;Zou et al, 2022;Lestari et al, 2022).…”

Section: Further Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

A process-based model for quantifying the effects of canal blocking on water table and CO₂ emissions in restored tropical peatlands

Urzainki

Palviainen

Hökkä

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Abstract. Drainage in tropical peatlands increases CO2 emissions, the rate of subsidence, and the risk of forest fires, among other negative environmental impacts. These effects can be mitigated by raising the water table depth (WTD) using canal or ditch blocks. The performance of canal blocks in raising WTD is, however, poorly understood, because the WTD monitoring data is limited and spatially concentrated around canals and canal blocks. This raises the following question: how effective are canal blocks in raising the WTD over large areas? In this work we composed a process-based hydrological model to assess the rewetting performance of 168 canal blocks in a 22000 ha peatland area in Sumatra, Indonesia. We simulated daily WTD over one year using an existing canal block setup and compared it to the situation without blocks. The study was performed across two El-Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) scenarios, and four different peat hydraulic properties. Our simulations revealed that while canal blocks had a net positive impact on WTD rise, they lowered WTD in some areas, and the extent of their effect over one year was limited to a distance of about 600 m around the canals. We also show that canal blocks are most effective during dry periods and in peatlands with high hydraulic conductivity. Averaging over all modelled scenarios, blocks raised the annual mean WTD by only 0.9 cm. This value was 2.78 times larger in the dry year than in the wet year (1.39cm versus 0.50 cm), and there was a 2.76 fold difference between the scenarios with the maximum and minimum hydraulic conductivity (1.50 cm versus 0.54 cm). Using a linear relationship between WTD and CO2 emissions, we estimated that, averaging over peat hydraulic properties, canal blocks prevented the emission of 1.03 Mg ha-1 CO2 in the dry year and 0.37 Mg ha-1 CO2 in the wet year.

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Rewetting global wetlands effectively reduces major greenhouse gas emissions

Abstract: This is a repository copy of Rewetting global wetlands effectively reduces major greenhouse gas emissions.

Cited by 79 publications

References 74 publications

Large increases in methane emissions expected from North America’s largest wetland complex

Large increases in methane emissions expected from North America’s largest wetland complex

Net greenhouse gas balance of fibre wood plantation on peat in Indonesia

A process-based model for quantifying the effects of canal blocking on water table and CO₂ emissions in restored tropical peatlands

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Rewetting global wetlands effectively reduces major greenhouse gas emissions

Abstract: This is a repository copy of Rewetting global wetlands effectively reduces major greenhouse gas emissions.

Cited by 79 publications

References 74 publications

Large increases in methane emissions expected from North America’s largest wetland complex

Large increases in methane emissions expected from North America’s largest wetland complex

Net greenhouse gas balance of fibre wood plantation on peat in Indonesia

A process-based model for quantifying the effects of canal blocking on water table and CO2 emissions in restored tropical peatlands

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A process-based model for quantifying the effects of canal blocking on water table and CO₂ emissions in restored tropical peatlands