The biophysical climate mitigation potential of boreal peatlands during the growing season

Helbig, Manuel; Waddington, J. M.; Alekseychik, Pavel; Amiro, B.D.; Aurela, Mika; Barr, Alan G.; Black, T. Andrew; Carey, Sean K.; Chen, Jiquan; Chi, Jinshu; Desai, Ankur R.; Dunn, Allison L.; Euskirchen, Eugénie; Flanagan, Lawrence B.; Friborg, Thomas; Garneau, Michelle; Grelle, Achim; Harder, Silvie; Heliasz, Michal; Humphreys, Elyn; Ikawa, Hiroki; Isabelle, Pierre‐Érik; Iwata, Hiroyasu; Jassal, Rachhpal S.; Korkiakoski, Mika; Kurbatova, Juliya; Kutzbach, Lars; Лапшина, Е. Д.; Lindroth, Anders; Löfvenius, Mikaell Ottosson; Lohila, Annalea; Mammarella, Ivan; Marsh, Philip; Moore, Paul A.; Maximov, Trofim C.; Nadeau, Daniel F.; Nicholls, Erin M.; Nilsson, Mats; Ohta, Takeshi; Peichl, Matthias; Petrone, Richard M.; Prokushkin, Anatoly; Quinton, William L.; Roulet, Nigel T.; Runkle, Benjamin R. K.; Sonnentag, Oliver; Strachan, I. B.; Taillardat, Pierre; Tuittila, Eeva‐Stiina; Tuovinen, Juha‐Pekka; Turner, J.; Ueyama, Masahito; Varlagin, Andrej; Vesala, Timo; Wilmking, Martin; Zyrianov, Vyacheslav; Schulze, Christopher

doi:10.1088/1748-9326/abab34

Cited by 38 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 103 publications

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“…Helbig et al. (2020) also found that a combination of peatland surface properties led to a cooling (from 1.7 to 2.5°C) in afternoon air temperatures compared to adjacent forest landscapes. Hemes, Eichelmann, et al.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…Thus, there is no active control of transport of any gases between the photosynthesizing cells in Sphagnum and the atmosphere (Rydin et al, 2013). Helbig et al (2020) also found that moss-dominated peatlands experienced a much weaker drop in s E G in response to the increased vapor pressure deficit compared to vascular plant-dominated ecosystems. Usually, the conductance between the atmosphere and Sphagnum's photosynthesizing tissues is a fixed value (Williams & Flanagan, 1998).…”

Section: Rewetting-induced Changes In Surface Properties and Energy Partitioningmentioning

confidence: 95%

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Biophysical Impacts of Historical Disturbances, Restoration Strategies, and Vegetation Types in a Peatland Ecosystem

et al. 2021

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Section: Rewetting-induced Changes In Surface Properties and Energy Partitioningmentioning

confidence: 95%

Biophysical Impacts of Historical Disturbances, Restoration Strategies, and Vegetation Types in a Peatland Ecosystem

et al. 2021

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“…Simulated peatland area losses are driven mostly by committed changes and increasing temperatures. Higher temperatures lead to an increase in evapotranspiration, especially in boreal peatlands (Helbig et al, 2020b), and thus a decrease in the regional water balance which is not compensated for despite a potential concurrent increase in annual precipitation. This corresponds to the already observed decade-to-centurylong drying trends in northern Europe (Swindles et al, 2019;Zhang et al, 2020) and eastern Canada peatlands (Pellerin and Lavoie, 2003;Pinceloup et al, 2020;Beauregard et al, 2020), regions of large simulated committed area loss, which is found to result in negative effects on carbon accumulation rates and strong trends of woody encroachment.…”

Section: Driver Contributionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Temperatures are projected to disproportionately increase in the northern high latitudes (Collins et al, 2013), where the largest portion of global peatlands reside (Xu et al, 2018b). Industrial warming has already led to increases in peatland evapotranspiration (Helbig et al, 2020b), leading to a widespread drying trend in the peatlands of northern Europe (Swindles et al, 2019;Zhang et al, 2020) and eastern Canada peatlands (Pellerin and Lavoie, 2003). The water table is an important regulator in peatland ecosystems with complex feedbacks to vegetation and carbon cycling (Sawada et al, 2003;Zhong et al, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Committed and projected future changes in global peatlands – continued transient model simulations since the Last Glacial Maximum

Müller

Joos

2021

Biogeosciences

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Abstract. Peatlands are diverse wetland ecosystems distributed mostly over the northern latitudes and tropics. Globally they store a large portion of the global soil organic carbon and provide important ecosystem services. The future of these systems under continued anthropogenic warming and direct human disturbance has potentially large impacts on atmospheric CO2 and climate. We performed global long-term projections of peatland area and carbon over the next 5000 years using a dynamic global vegetation model forced with climate anomalies from 10 models of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) and three standard future scenarios. These projections are seamlessly continued from a transient simulation from the Last Glacial Maximum to the present to account for the full transient history and are continued beyond 2100 with constant boundary conditions. Our results suggest short to long-term net losses of global peatland area and carbon, with higher losses under higher-emission scenarios. Large parts of today's active northern peatlands are at risk, whereas peatlands in the tropics and, in case of mitigation, eastern Asia and western North America can increase their area and carbon stocks. Factorial simulations reveal committed historical changes and future rising temperature as the main driver of future peatland loss and increasing precipitations as the driver for regional peatland expansion. Additional simulations forced with climate anomalies from a subset of climate models which follow the extended CMIP6 scenarios, transient until 2300, show qualitatively similar results to the standard scenarios but highlight the importance of extended transient future scenarios for long-term carbon cycle projections. The spread between simulations forced with different climate model anomalies suggests a large uncertainty in projected peatland changes due to uncertain climate forcing. Our study highlights the importance of quantifying the future peatland feedback to the climate system and its inclusion into future earth system model projections.

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“…Boreal wetlands represent less than 3% of the Earth's surface area yet store 20-30% of the total terrestrial carbon (Yu 2012;Xu et al 2018). These wetlands, which in Alberta are predominantly peatlands (Vitt and Chee 1990;Vitt 1996;Ficken et al 2019), provide globally important climate regulation services due to their ability to reduce air temperatures (Helbig et al 2020), sequester carbon, and mediate greenhouse gas fluxes (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005). They also provide important water regulating services by diluting downstream pollution, filtering atmospheric pollutants, and retaining and sequestering nutrients; they further mediate water flows by attenuating runoff and discharge rates, and mitigate downstream floods (IPBES 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Drivers, pressures, and state responses to inform long-term oil sands wetland monitoring program objectives

Ficken

Connor

Rooney

et al. 2021

Wetlands Ecol Manage

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Boreal peatlands provide numerous ecosystem services ranging from carbon sequestration to the provisioning of habitat for species integral to Indigenous communities. In the Oil Sands Region of Alberta, Canada, human development related to oil and gas extraction occurs in a wetland-dominated landscape. Wetland monitoring programs can determine the extent to which development impacts wetlands, but existing monitoring programs focus on characterizing biodiversity across the region and on compliance and regulatory monitoring that assumes impacts from oil sands development do not extend past lease boundaries. This is unlikely to be true since some impacts, such as particulate deposition, can extend over large areas contingent on local weather and topography. To inform the development of a new regional wetland monitoring program to assess the cumulative effects of oil sands development on wetlands, we synthesized information on the scope of wetland research across the Oil Sands Region, including the anthropogenic stressors that impact wetlands and the wetland characteristics sensitive to different disturbances. We developed a conceptual model linking human development with wetland ecology in the region to make explicit the relationships among oil sands development stressors and different components of wetland ecosystems. By highlighting testable relationships, this conceptual model can be used as a collection of hypotheses to identify knowledge gaps and to guide future research priorities. relationships among We found that the majority of studies are short-term (77% were ≤ 5 years) and are conducted over a limited spatial extent (82% were sub-regional). Studies of reclaimed wetlands were relatively common (18% of all tests); disproportionate to the occurrence of this wetland type. Results from these studies likely cannot be extrapolated to other wetlands in the region. Nevertheless, the impacts of tailings contaminants, wetland reclamation activities, and surface water chemistry are well-represented in the literature. Research on other types of land disturbance is lacking. A coordinated, regional monitoring program is needed to gain a complete understanding of the direct and indirect impacts of human development in the region and to address remaining knowledge gaps.

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The biophysical climate mitigation potential of boreal peatlands during the growing season

Cited by 38 publications

References 103 publications

Biophysical Impacts of Historical Disturbances, Restoration Strategies, and Vegetation Types in a Peatland Ecosystem

Biophysical Impacts of Historical Disturbances, Restoration Strategies, and Vegetation Types in a Peatland Ecosystem

Committed and projected future changes in global peatlands – continued transient model simulations since the Last Glacial Maximum

Drivers, pressures, and state responses to inform long-term oil sands wetland monitoring program objectives

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