Arctic peatlands have existed as a significant reservoir of terrestrial carbon over many thousands of years, including during periods of much warmer global climate. Peatland carbon accumulation rates, their persistence and their ability to exchange radiatively important carbon gases such as carbon dioxide and methane with the atmosphere throughout the Holocene (~last 10,000 years) have implications for the earth's global carbon budget, past and future radiative forcing of climate and the continued stability of these ecosystems. A team of U.S. modelers and observationalists will work together with colleagues from several Arctic countries to better model the factors responsible for long term sequestration of organic carbon including peatland hydrology, vegetative composition, interaction with permafrost and the role of microbially mediated anoxia. The overlying hypothesis to be investigated is that within a reasonably broad zone of climate and ecosystem conditions, internal dynamics of peatland hydrology, productivity and decomposition rates are responsible for the past and continued stability of these systems. Applying knowledge of this past stability to contemporary peatland conditions may enable insight as to whether future climate change will be either too rapid or too extreme for these systems to adapt or persist.
An outreach effort based on an accessible temperate peatland site will also be developed as a vehicle for communicating ecological, carbon cycling and global change science themes to the general public.
This work is supported under the NSF Carbon and Water in the Earth System solicitation, an interdisciplinary funding opportunity from the Directorate of Geosciences.
