Simulating long-term carbon dynamics in disturbed and restored peatlands

English Abstract:

Around 25% of the global peatlands have been exploited either for agricultural purposes, forestry, peat extraction or infrastructure development (Parish et al. 2008). Exploitation of peatlands is still on-going. Modelling current and future carbon exchanges in peatlands thus requires further understanding of carbon dynamics in drained, exploited and restored peatlands.

This projects aims at quantifying the carbon balance in disturbed and restored peatlands. Since no long-term (i.e. > 15 years) datasets are available, the chosen approach is the development of a new model. The developed model, suitable for disturbed and restored peatlands, is based on the millennial scale Holocene Peat Model (Frolking et al. 2010) and the centennial scale McGill Wetland Model (Wu et al. 2012), which simulates carbon fluxes (i.e. CO₂, CH₄ and DOC).

This new model simulating peatland dynamics in restored peatlands accounts for peat mining and the specific vegetation succession occurring during the restoration process. It includes a new representation of vegetation dynamics and interactions between vegetation and ecohydrology. Simulation results give an estimate of the amount of carbon accumulated in the peatland prior to its exploitation as well as the carbon loss during exploitation. This model allows the estimation of current and future carbon fluxes associated with various scenarios of restoration.