Dear Climate Apes,
I recently learned this and think it might not be a well known fact. So here is a little introduction about peatlands / moorlands and their huge potential but also threat to combatting climate change. Looking forward to discussions, ideas or suggestions on which projects to support.
TLDR: Peatlands are the scary moors where bodies donβt decompose. Plant parts also decompose very very slowly, thatβs how giant amounts of carbon can be stored. Because they have been dried up, they are now emitting 2,5 times as many greenhouse gases as global aviation and will be for the next hundreds of years, unless theyβre rewetted. It is also necessary to prevent further destruction.
Canβt read, do you have a video? Gotchu. English, Francais, Espanol, Deutsch
https://preview.redd.it/pe2joicssqy71.jpg?width=474&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9f6bf4600b9f421a76a6c9f911f35f2ceab32550
What are peatlands?
Peatlands are a type of wetland where dead plant material doesnβt fully decompose because itβs too soggy. They can be solely fed by rainwater (bogs) or also by ground water (fens). In these ecosystems, peat builds up as spongy dark soil thatβs (aka sod, turf). Over thousands of years, thick layers of peat accumulate and trap huge amounts of carbon, helping to cool the climate on a global scale. Although they only occupy 3 percent of the global land area (here's a map), peatlands contain about 25 precent of global soil carbon β twice as much as the worldβs forestsΒΉ.
Great. And then, what happened?
People didnβt want soggy land because itβs hard to farm on. Around 500,000βkmΒ² (10β15% of the current peatland area), have been drained for agriculture, peat extraction and forestryΒ². Peat is used in plant substrates and was, and in some areas of the world still is^(4), burnt to heat up houses. Notice that although turf is basically plant parts, this is not a regenerative source of energy, because these plants have been in the ground for hundreds or thousands of years.
Ok, so we stop firing up peat and everyhing will be fine, right?
No. Because the peatlands have been dried up, the dead plants are now decomposing, emitting giant amounts of COΒ² into the atmospher
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Repost: https://twitter.com/ashish_a_malik/status/1474241408361906177
https://www.findaphd.com/phds/project/super-dtp-impact-of-multiple-climate-stressors-on-microbial-processes-and-carbon-sequestration-in-peatlands/?p140154
Peatlands represent one of the largest stores of terrestrial carbon, accounting for ~21% of the global total soil carbon stock. Increasing food and energy needs have led to drainage of peatlands for cropping and forestry that cause huge losses of carbon. Climate warming, increased drought occurrences and fires in these fragile ecosystems exacerbate uncertainty over the fate of peatland carbon. Increased effort is therefore required to develop sustainable management approaches for peatlands, which is expected to make an important contribution to climate change mitigation in Scotland.
Drainage and climate stressors such as drought and warming impact the hydrology of wetlands such that the removal of water-logged anoxic conditions leads to increased decomposition of the otherwise preserved peat organic matter and release of CO2 back to the atmosphere (Kitson & Bell, 2020; Tiemeyer et al., 2016). Such conditions may reduce methane emissions but increased CO2 release outweighs the climate benefits of methane reduction in terms of long-term global warming potential (Huang et al., 2021). Fires, on the other hand, primarily affect belowground carbon cycling through change in aboveground organic matter and therefore decomposition rates and CO2 flux.
Microbes (bacteria, archaea, viruses, fungi and other microeukaryotes) act as gatekeepers of soil-atmosphere carbon exchange because their growth, activity and interactions with the environment control the fate of carbon inputs (Malik et al., 2018). However, there is a lack of mechanistic understanding of the microbial physiological processes in peatlands that are responsible for carbon cycling, and their sensitivity to multiple climate stressors such as warming, drought and fire (Ritson et al., 2021).
The project aims to investigate microbial carbon cycling processes in intact and degraded peatlands that are under the influence of climate extremes, which are becoming increasingly frequent. There is a general consensus that degraded peatlands are less resilient to cli
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