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Oil palm and Acacia pulpwood plantations are being established at a rapid rate on drained peatland in southeast Asia. Accurate measurements of associated carbon losses are still scarce, however, due mainly to difficulties of excluding autotrophic carbon fluxes from chamber-based flux measurements and uncertainties about the extent of waterborne losses. Here, we demonstrate a simple approach to determining total net carbon loss from subsidence records that is applicable to steady state conditions under continuous land use. We studied oil palm and Acacia plantations that had been drained for 5-19 years. Very similar subsidence rates and dry bulk density profiles were obtained, irrespective of crop type or age of the plantation, indicating that the peat profiles were in a steady state. These are conditions that allow for the deduction of net carbon loss by multiplying the rate of subsidence by the carbon density of the peat below the water table. With an average subsidence rate of 4.2 cm y-1 and a carbon density of 0.043 g cm-3, we arrive at a net carbon loss of ~18 t ha-1 y-1 (~66 t CO2-eq ha-1 y-1) for typical oil palm and Acacia plantations more than five years after drainage, without large differences between the plantation types. The proposed method enables calculation of regional or project-specific carbon loss rates to feed into mitigation schemes of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

(1) Huge reductions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrous oxide (N2O) effluxes can be attained by rewetting drained peatlands, but this will increase methane (CH4) effluxes. (2) The scientific data base for methane effluxes from peatlands is much larger than that for CO2 or N2O. Once anoxic conditions are provided, the availability of fresh plant material is the major factor in methane production. Old (recalcitrant) peat plays only a subordinate role in gas efflux. (3) The annual mean water level is a surprisingly good indicator for methane effluxes, but at high water levels the cover of aerenchymous shunts (gas conductive plant tissue) becomes a better proxy. Ideally, both water level and cover of aerenchymous shunts should be assessed to arrive at robust estimates of methane effluxes. (4) The available data provide sufficient guidance for arriving at moderately accurate (Tier 1) estimates consistent with IPCC methodologies. For more accurate estimation (higher tier approaches), vegetation provides a promising basis for development of more detailed efflux factors. Vegetation is a good proxy for mean water levels and can provide - with extra attention to aerenchymous shunts - a robust proxy for accurate and spatially explicit estimates of methane effluxes over large areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drainage of peatlands leads to the decomposition of peat, resulting in substantial losses of carbon and nitrogen to the atmosphere. The conservation and restoration of peatlands can provide a major contribution to the mitigation of climate change. Improvements to guidance and capacity for reporting of greenhouse gas emissions from peatlands will be valuable in the context of the current negotiations towards a post-2012 climate agreement. This article evaluates IPCC approaches to greenhouse gas emissions from managed organic (peat) soils and presents a summary table comparing IPCC default values with best estimates based on recent literature. Inconsistencies are pointed out with regard to the IPCC definitions of organic soils and climate zones. The 2006 IPCC Guidelines use a definition of organic soil that is not totally consistent with FAO definitions, use climate zones that are not fully compatible, present default CO2 values that are substantially (often an order of magnitude) too low, and present a default N2O value for tropical cropland that is also an order of magnitude too low. An update of IPCC default values is desirable. The IPCC Emission Factor Database offers a platform for establishing more accurate emission factors, but so far contains little information about emissions from peat soils. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the hydrological constraints on the existence of forested peat domes (peat swamp forests) in the humid tropics, the self-regulation mechanisms that enable them to persist and the implications for restoration of damaged domes. The most important requirement for the preservation of peat is permanent saturation by water. The variable input of precipitation must be translated into a constant water supply to the peat mound. In intact tropical peat swamp domes, water is stored above the peat surface in depressions between hummocks that surround tree trunks and between spreading buttress roots. This above-ground water store is analogous to the water stored in the loose upper layer of peat and vegetation in Sphagnum bogs. The horizontal differentiation of the peat swamp forest floor into hummocks with limited hydraulic conductivity and depressions with high storage capacity resembles the hummock-hollow patterning of these Sphagnum bogs. Hummocks and other surface elements functionally resemble V-notch weirs that regulate water availability. Buttressed trees play a key role in providing the structural elements for hydrological self-regulation. An additional level of regulation is found in the concentric zonation of forest types with increased presence of buttressed trees on steeper margins. Conservation and restoration efforts should take into account the interrelationships between trees, water and peat and the hydrological feedbacks that operate as a consequence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including one on biomass for bioenergy production, the other on renewable energy resource and the third on wetland ecosystem.

The rewetting of formerly drained peatlands can help to counteract climate change through the reduction of CO 2 emissions. However, this can lead to resuming CH 4 emissions due to changes in the microbiome, favoring CH 4 -producing archaea. How plants, hydrology and microbiomes interact as ultimate determinants of CH 4 dynamics is still poorly understood. Using a mesocosm approach, we studied peat microbiomes, below-ground root biomass and CH 4 fluxes with three different water level regimes (stable high, stable low and fluctuating) and four different plant communities (bare peat, Carex rostrata, Juncus inflexus and their mixture) over the course of one growing season. A significant difference in microbiome composition was found between mesocosms with and without plants, while the difference between plant species identity or water regimes was rather weak. A significant difference was also found between the upper and lower peat, with the difference increasing as plants grew. By the end of the growing season, the methanogen relative abundance was higher in the sub-soil layer, as well as in the bare peat and C. rostrata pots, as compared to J. inflexus or mixture pots. This was inversely linked to the larger root area of J. inflexus. The root area also negatively correlated with CH 4 fluxes which positively correlated with the relative abundance of methanogens. Despite the absence or low abundance of methanotrophs in many samples, the integration of methanotroph abundance improved the quality of the correlation with CH 4 fluxes, and methanogens and methanotrophs together determined CH 4 fluxes in a structural equation model. However, water regime showed no significant impact on plant roots and methanogens, and consequently, on CH 4 fluxes. This study showed that plant roots determined the microbiome composition and, in particular, the relative abundance of methanogens and methanotrophs, which, in interaction, drove the CH 4 fluxes., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

The EU Nature Restoration Law (NRL) is critical for the restoration of degraded ecosystems and active afforestation of degraded peatlands has been suggested as a restoration measure under the NRL. Here, we discuss the current state of scientific evidence on the climate mitigation effects of peatlands under forestry. Afforestation of drained peatlands without restoring their hydrology does not fully restore ecosystem functions. Evidence on long-term climate benefits is lacking and it is unclear whether CO 2 sequestration of forest on drained peatland can offset the carbon loss from the peat over the long-term. While afforestation may offer short-term gains in certain cases, it compromises the sustainability of peatland carbon storage. Thus, active afforestation of drained peatlands is not a viable option for climate mitigation under the EU Nature Restoration Law and might even impede future rewetting/restoration efforts. Instead, restoring hydrological conditions through rewetting is crucial for effective peatland restoration., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Drainage and agricultural use transform natural peatlands from a net carbon (C) sink to a net C source. Rewetting of peatlands, despite of high methane (CH 4 ) emissions, holds the potential to mitigate climate change by greatly reducing CO 2 emissions. However, the time span for this transition is unknown because most studies are limited to a few years. Especially, nonpermanent open water areas often created after rewetting, are highly productive. Here, we present 14 consecutive years of CH 4 flux measurements following rewetting of a formerly long-term drained peatland in the Peene valley. Measurements were made at two rewetted sites (non-inundated vs. inundated) using manual chambers. During the study period, significant differences in measured CH 4 emissions occurred. In general, these differences overlapped with stages of ecosystem transition from a cultivated grassland to a polytrophic lake dominated by emergent helophytes, but could also be additionally explained by other variables. This transition started with a rapid vegetation shift from dying cultivated grasses to open water floating and submerged hydrophytes and significantly increased CH 4 emissions. Since 2008, helophytes have gradually spread from the shoreline into the open water area, especially in drier years. This process was periodically delayed by exceptional inundation and eventually resulted in the inundated site being covered by emergent helophytes. While the period between 2009 and 2015 showed exceptionally high CH 4 emissions, these decreased significantly after cattail and other emergent helophytes became dominant at the inundated site. Therefore, CH 4 emissions declined only after 10 years of transition following rewetting, potentially reaching a new steady state. Overall, this study highlights the importance of an integrative approach to understand the shallow lakes CH 4 biogeochemistry, encompassing the entire area with its mosaic of different vegetation forms. This should be ideally done through a study design including proper measurement site allocation as well as long-term measurements., (© 2023 The Authors. Global Change Biology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Precipitation is a key factor affecting shallow water table fluctuations. Although the literature on shallow aquifers is vast, groundwater response to precipitation in peatlands has received little attention so far. Characterizing groundwater response to precipitation events in differently managed peatlands can give insight into ecohydrological processes. In this study we determined the groundwater table response rate following precipitation events at a drained and a rewetted fen to characterize the effect of rewetting on hydrological buffer capacity. Multiple regression analysis revealed that the groundwater table at the rewetted fen has more than two times lower rate of response to precipitation events than that of the drained fen, even after adjusting for antecedent groundwater levels. Thus, the rewetted fen delivers a better hydrological buffer function against heavy precipitation events than the drained fen. We found that for the depths at which the groundwater interacts with incoming precipitation, the peat of the rewetted fen has a higher specific yield causing groundwater to rise slower compared to the response at the drained fen. A period of 20 years of rewetting was sufficient to form a new layer of organic material with a significant fraction of macropores providing storage capacity. Long-term rewetting has the potential to create favorable conditions for new peat accumulation, thereby altering water table response. Our study has implications for evaluating the success of restoration measures with respect to hydrological functions of percolation fens., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Drained peatlands are significant sources of the greenhouse gas (GHG) carbon dioxide. Rewetting is a proven strategy used to protect carbon stocks; however, it can lead to increased emissions of the potent GHG methane. The response to rewetting of soil microbiomes as drivers of these processes is poorly understood, as are the biotic and abiotic factors that control community composition. We analyzed the pro- and eukaryotic microbiomes of three contrasting pairs of minerotrophic fens subject to decade-long drainage and subsequent long-term rewetting. Abiotic soil properties including moisture, dissolved organic matter, methane fluxes, and ecosystem respiration rates were also determined. The composition of the microbiomes was fen-type-specific, but all rewetted sites showed higher abundances of anaerobic taxa compared to drained sites. Based on multi-variate statistics and network analyses, we identified soil moisture as a major driver of community composition. Furthermore, salinity drove the separation between coastal and freshwater fen communities. Methanogens were more than 10-fold more abundant in rewetted than in drained sites, while their abundance was lowest in the coastal fen, likely due to competition with sulfate reducers. The microbiome compositions were reflected in methane fluxes from the sites. Our results shed light on the factors that structure fen microbiomes via environmental filtering.

Peatlands are strategic areas for climate change mitigation because of their matchless carbon stocks. Drained peatlands release this carbon to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide (CO 2 ). Peatland rewetting effectively stops these CO 2 emissions, but also re-establishes the emission of methane (CH 4 ). Essentially, management must choose between CO 2 emissions from drained, or CH 4 emissions from rewetted, peatland. This choice must consider radiative effects and atmospheric lifetimes of both gases, with CO 2 being a weak but persistent, and CH 4 a strong but short-lived, greenhouse gas. The resulting climatic effects are, thus, strongly time-dependent. We used a radiative forcing model to compare forcing dynamics of global scenarios for future peatland management using areal data from the Global Peatland Database. Our results show that CH 4 radiative forcing does not undermine the climate change mitigation potential of peatland rewetting. Instead, postponing rewetting increases the long-term warming effect through continued CO 2 emissions.

The tropical peat swamp forests of South-East Asia are being rapidly converted to agricultural plantations of oil palm and Acacia creating a significant global "hot-spot" for CO 2 emissions. However, the effect of this major perturbation has yet to be quantified in terms of global warming potential (GWP) and the Earth's radiative budget. We used a GWP analysis and an impulse-response model of radiative forcing to quantify the climate forcing of this shift from a long-term carbon sink to a net source of greenhouse gases (CO 2 and CH 4 ). In the GWP analysis, five tropical peatlands were sinks in terms of their CO 2 equivalent fluxes while they remained undisturbed. However, their drainage and conversion to oil palm and Acacia plantations produced a dramatic shift to very strong net CO 2 -equivalent sources. The induced losses of peat carbon are ~20× greater than the natural CO 2 sequestration rates. In contrast, a radiative forcing model indicates that the magnitude of this shift from a net cooling to warming effect is ultimately related to the size of an individual peatland's carbon pool. The continuous accumulation of carbon in pristine tropical peatlands produced a progressively negative radiative forcing (i.e., cooling) that ranged from -2.1 to -6.7 nW/m 2 per hectare peatland by 2010 CE, referenced to zero at the time of peat initiation. Peatland conversion to plantations leads to an immediate shift from negative to positive trend in radiative forcing (i.e., warming). If drainage persists, peak warming ranges from +3.3 to +8.7 nW/m 2 per hectare of drained peatland. More importantly, this net warming impact on the Earth's radiation budget will persist for centuries to millennia after all the peat has been oxidized to CO 2 . This previously unreported and undesirable impact on the Earth's radiative balance provides a scientific rationale for conserving tropical peatlands in their pristine state., (© 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Ice-wedge polygon peatlands contain a substantial part of the carbon stored in permafrost soils. However, little is known about their long-term carbon accumulation rates (CAR) in relation to shifts in vegetation and climate. We collected four peat profiles from one single polygon in NE Yakutia and cut them into contiguous 0.5 cm slices. Pollen density interpolation between AMS (14)C dated levels provided the time span contained in each of the sample slices, which--in combination with the volumetric carbon content--allowed for the reconstruction of CAR over decadal and centennial timescales. Vegetation representing dry palaeo-ridges and wet depressions was reconstructed with detailed micro- and macrofossil analysis. We found repeated shifts between wet and dry conditions during the past millennium. Dry ridges with associated permafrost growth originated during phases of (relatively) warm summer temperature and collapsed during relatively cold phases, illustrating the important role of vegetation and peat as intermediaries between ambient air temperature and the permafrost. The average long-term CAR across the four profiles was 10.6 ± 5.5 g C m(-2) yr(-1). Time-weighted mean CAR did not differ significantly between wet depression and dry ridge/hummock phases (10.6 ± 5.2 g C m(-2) yr(-1) and 10.3 ± 5.7 g C m(-2) yr(-1), respectively). Although we observed increased CAR in relation to warm shifts, we also found changes in the opposite direction and the highest CAR actually occurred during the Little Ice Age. In fact, CAR rather seems to be governed by strong internal feedback mechanisms and has roughly remained stable on centennial time scales. The absence of significant differences in CAR between dry ridge and wet depression phases suggests that recent warming and associated expansion of shrubs will not affect long-term rates of carbon burial in ice-wedge polygon peatlands., (© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)