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130,000 years of data show peatlands store carbon long-term
https://www1.lehigh.edu/news/130000-years-of-data-show-peatlands-store-carbon-long-term130,000 years of data show peatlands store carbon long-term
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Peatlands, according to Zicheng Yu, a professor in Lehigh University’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, only comprise about 3% of the Earth’s land area, but contain about one-third of the global soil carbon and thus have an outsized impact on the global carbon cycle―and an important role to play in global climate change.
It has been known that during the Holocene (11,700 years ago to the present) northern peatlands accumulated significant carbon stocks over several thousand years. However, almost nothing has been known about peatlands that existed before that time.
Now, an international team of scientists, led by Claire C. Treat of the University of Eastern Finland and Thomas Kleinen of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Germany, has become the first to conduct a study of global peatland extent and carbon stocks through the last interglacial-glacial cycle―130,000 years ago to the present—filling this key knowledge gap. Using a newly compiled database of 1,063 stratigraphic records of peat deposits buried by mineral sediments, as well as a global peatland model, the team discovered that northern peatland expanded across high latitudes during warm periods and were buried during periods of cooling, or glacial advance.
According to the article describing the research, “Widespread global peatland establishment and persistence over the last 130,000 y,” published online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS): “These results show that northern peatlands accumulate significant C stocks during warmer times, indicating their potential for C sequestration during the warming Anthropocene.”
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https://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1813305116…
Peatlands, according to Zicheng Yu, a professor in Lehigh University’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, only comprise about 3% of the Earth’s land area, but contain about one-third of the global soil carbon and thus have an outsized impact on the global carbon cycle―and an important role to play in global climate change.
It has been known that during the Holocene (11,700 years ago to the present) northern peatlands accumulated significant carbon stocks over several thousand years. However, almost nothing has been known about peatlands that existed before that time.
Now, an international team of scientists, led by Claire C. Treat of the University of Eastern Finland and Thomas Kleinen of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Germany, has become the first to conduct a study of global peatland extent and carbon stocks through the last interglacial-glacial cycle―130,000 years ago to the present—filling this key knowledge gap. Using a newly compiled database of 1,063 stratigraphic records of peat deposits buried by mineral sediments, as well as a global peatland model, the team discovered that northern peatland expanded across high latitudes during warm periods and were buried during periods of cooling, or glacial advance.
According to the article describing the research, “Widespread global peatland establishment and persistence over the last 130,000 y,” published online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS): “These results show that northern peatlands accumulate significant C stocks during warmer times, indicating their potential for C sequestration during the warming Anthropocene.”
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