B11H-0543
Geomorphogenesis and Carbon Fluxes of Tropical Peat Domes
Monday, 14 December 2015
Poster Hall (Moscone South)
Alex Cobb1, Alison Hoyt2, René Dommain3 and Charles Harvey2, (1)Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), Singapore, Singapore, (2)Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States, (3)University of Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany
Abstract:
Tropical peatlands sequester and release globally significant quantities of carbon dioxide as peat domes grow and subside on millennial time scales. Research to date indicates that the hydrologic feedback between water table depth and peat accumulation is fundamentally similar across tropical peatlands, but peat accumulation and fluxes cannot always be spatially uniform across the landscape because peat accumulates in domes. We show that upscaling from local measurements to landscape fluxes of CO2 and CH4 requires (1) sampling in both the growing interiors and the static margins of peat domes, and (2) use of topographical data from the peatland. Similarly, inference of past carbon sequestration from dated peat cores requires a model for the partitioning of peatlands into domes by drainage networks.
