Tropical peatland carbon losses from oil palm plantations may be underestimated

A press release from the University of Minnesota: Draining tropical peatlands for oil palm plantations may result in nearly twice as much carbon loss as official estimates, according to a new study by researchers from the University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment and the Union of Concerned Scientists in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

Peatlands — waterlogged, organic soils — have developed over thou
sands of years as carbon storage systems. In Southeast Asia, peat swamp forests cover about 250,000 square kilometers, a land area about the size of Michigan. In the past 15 years, peatland forests have been rapidly drained and cleared to make way for oil palm and pulpwood plantations. Draining exposes the upper peat layer to oxygen, raising decomposition rates and soil carbon losses. Most of that carbon is emitted to the atmosphere, speeding up climate change.

Kimberly M. Carlson, a postdoctoral research scholar with IonE’s Global Landscapes Initiative, and UCS researchers Lael K. Goodman and Calen C. May-Tobin designed their research to support site-specific greenhouse gas emissions assessments in tropical plantations. “We wanted to know whether water table depth could be used as a proxy for soil carbon loss in peatland plantations,” Carlson explained.

...The study, a comprehensive analysis of scientific literature on tropical plantation peatland carbon balance, found a correlation between long-term water table depth (the distance from the soil surface to the water surface) and soil carbon loss rate. This finding suggests that peat water table monitoring could help companies more accurately measure their greenhouse gas emissions.

The researchers compared two measurements of carbon loss: subsidence and mass balance. To find the subsidence rate, scientists measure how much the land has sunk over time and how much carbon is stored in the soil. Subsidence models alone cannot inform the global warming potential of peatland drainage.

...Key findings of the study: The lower the water table, the higher the rate of carbon loss[, and m]ore studies in tropical peatland plantations are needed to reduce uncertainty about the global warming potential of peat drainage....

A palm oil plantation in  Cigudeg, Bogor, shot by Achmad Rabin Taim, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license 

Rising global temperatures will have little effect on boreal peatlands

Jeff Sternsland at the University of South Carolina:
To some scientists studying climate change, boreal peatlands are considered a potential ticking time bomb. With huge stores of carbon in peat, the fear is that rising global temperatures could cause the release of massive amounts of CO2 from the peatlands into the atmosphere—essentially creating a greenhouse gas feedback loop.

A new study by researchers at the University of South Carolina and University of California Los Angeles challenges that notion, and demonstrates that the effect of temperature increases on peat storage could be minor. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and published in “Global Biogeochemical Cycles,” the study instead points to the length of time peat is exposed to oxygen as a much more important factor in how it releases carbon into the atmosphere.

The researchers used the biochemical composition of a peat core collected from the James Bay Lowland in Canada to assess the historical relationship between climate and the extent of peat decomposition. The core is a record of peat accumulation over the last 7,500 years and contains two intervals (the Medieval Climate Anomaly and the Holocene Thermal Maximum) when temperatures were about 2°C warmer than normal, providing a natural analogue for modern warming.

However, peat formed during these warm intervals was not extensively decomposed compared to peat formed during cooler periods. Instead, the most extensive decomposition coincided with drier conditions and longer oxygen exposure time during peat formation. This indicates oxygen exposure time was the primary control on peat decomposition, while temperature was of secondary importance. This was supported by comparing the extent of decomposition along a climate transect in the West Siberian Lowland, Russia. Cores from the northern end of the transect, which experienced longer oxygen exposure times, were more decomposed than cores from the south, which formed under warmer temperatures...

Sunset on the tundra, shot by Paul Gierszewski, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Satellites for peat's sake

A press release from the European Space Agency: Satellites can help us to safeguard nature’s richest carbon storehouses – peatlands. Peatlands make up just 3% of land but capture twice as much carbon as all forests combined. They are also an important source of drinking water and provide a home to many rare and threatened animals and plants.

Ecosystems work best when left intact but these wetland areas are being threatened by human exploitation, resulting in vast carbon emissions, frequent and uncontrollable fires and loss of valuable landscapes.

 Rezatec in Oxfordshire, UK, supported by ESA’s Integrated Applications Promotions programme, in the Peat spotter project will give landowners an easier and cheaper way of calculating the potential economic value of conserving or restoring their peatlands and monitoring the results of their investment.

“Peat spotter helps landowners to manage their peat resource more sustainably through mapping the area, measuring the carbon it contains and monitoring how its integrity is changing over time,” says Patrick Newton, CEO of Rezatec.

To do this, satellite imagery is used to locate and create initial mappings of peatlands. This information is enriched with ground data collected by field agents using handheld devices. An app prompts users in the field for measurements, satnav adds location information, and the data are then sent directly to a centralised office via satcom for analysis. The new approach is a cost-effective way of measuring peat extent and how intact it is over wide and potentially remote areas that are otherwise expensive to measure or inaccessible from the ground....

A peat deposit in Hanhisuo, Finland, shot by Ohikulkija, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

New research outlines global threat of smoldering peat fires

A press release from the Desert Research Institute: ...New research published this week in the journal Nature Geoscience, co-authored by Adam Watts, a fire ecologist at Nevada’s Desert Research Institute (DRI) and deputy director of DRI’s Climate, Ecosystems, Fire and Applications Program, outlines the threat of drying peatlands (also known as mires) across the globe and their increased vulnerability to fire and carbon loss.

Peatlands – which make up around three-percent of the Earth’s land surface and store approximately 25-percent of the world’s soil carbon – are deposits of plant material and organic matter mixed with soil that is too wet to support high levels of decomposition. Peatlands are found on all seven continents. Already the largest fires on Earth in terms of their carbon footprint, these smoldering fires burn through thick layers of peat, built up over thousands of years, which blanket the ground in ecosystems ranging from the tropics to the arctic.

"When people picture a forest fire, they probably think of flames licking up into tree tops, and animals trying to escape,” said the study’s lead author Merritt Turetsky, a professor of Integrative Biology at University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. “But peat fires tend to be creeping ground fires. They can burn for days and weeks, even under relatively wet conditions. They lack the drama of flames, but they produce a lot of smoke.”

That smoke contains large amounts of carbon and makes peat fires dangerous to human health. It can worsen air quality and even trigger asthma and other respiratory problems. “In addition to the amount of carbon released, the types of emissions also can make smoldering fires of greater concern than fires where most of the combustion takes place in flames,” said Watts, who is studying the emissions from burning peat and many other types of organic fuels with his DRI colleagues to determine their potential effects in the atmosphere and on our global climate.

“Peat fires are an example of wildfires having effects far beyond the areas where they occur, and these effects can last for a very long time,” he added....

A peat fire in Selengor, Malaysia, shot by Tan Yi Han, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Researchers create more accurate model for greenhouse gases from peatlands

A press release from Argonne National Laboratory: Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory have created a new model to more accurately describe the greenhouse gases likely to be released from Arctic peatlands as they warm. Their findings, based on modeling how oxygen filters through soil, suggest that previous models probably underestimated methane emissions and overrepresented carbon dioxide emissions from these regions.

Peatlands, common in the Arctic, are wetlands filled with dead and decaying organic matter. ...Cold temperatures keep the carbon locked in the soil. As the ground warms, however, microbes come to life and begin to decompose all that organic matter, which releases carbon into the atmosphere. Unfortunately, the extreme northern regions of the world are where warming has accelerated the most quickly—and it’s expected to pick up in the future. Scientists are concerned that Arctic warming could spiral quickly into a self-reinforcing cycle that dumps an enormous amount of carbon into the atmosphere.

...Up until now, researchers had been using a simple model that assumed water was the primary divider; soil above the water table would produce microbes that made CO2, and microbes below would produce methane. “But experiments had been showing that there could be significant limits on oxygen availability above the water ta
ble, and this would affect what form of carbon microbes release,” Fan said.

The size and characteristics of soil particles matter. If the oxygen gets trapped in air bubbles and consumed by other microbes or can’t filter down through soil, soil microbes will produce methane even if they’re above the water table. “So we set out to make a model that would take these findings into account,” Fan said.

The team used experimental data from peatland taken near Fairbanks, Alaska and plugged it into their model. The results showed their new model was much more accurate and suggested that more methane is produced and proportionally less CO2—than predicted by older water table-based models. “Revising this calculation will substantially affect current greenhouse gas production models in the Arctic,” Fan said....

Looks like a bulldozer sinking into thawing muskeg in Alaska, shot by Wyoherminator, public domain

Tropical and northern wetlands likely to blame for greenhouse gas increases

A press release from the University of Guelph: A surprising recent rise in atmospheric methane likely stems from wetland emissions, suggesting that much more of the potent greenhouse gas will be pumped into the atmosphere as northern wetlands continue to thaw and tropical ones to warm, according to a new international study led by a University of Guelph researcher.

The study supports calls for improved monitoring of wetlands and human changes to those ecosystems – a timely topic as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change prepares to examine land use impacts on greenhouse gas emissions, says Prof. Merritt Turetsky, Department of Integrative Biology.

Turetsky is the lead author
of a paper published today in Global Change Biology based on one of the largest-ever analyses of global methane emissions. The team looked at almost 20,000 field data measurements collected from 70 sites across arctic, temperate and tropical regions. Agnieszka Kotowska, a former master’s student, and David Olefeldt, a post-doc at Guelph, also were among 19 study co-authors from Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Finland, Germany and Sweden.

One of the strongest greenhouse gases, methane comes from agriculture and fossil fuel use, as well as natural sources such as microbes in saturated wetland soils. The amount of atmospheric methane has remained relatively stable for about a decade, but concentrations began to rise again in 2007. Scientists believe this increase stems partly from more methane being released from thawing northern wetlands.

Scientists have assumed that wetland methane release is largest in the tropics, said Turetsky. “But our analyses show that northern fens, such as those created when permafrost thaws, can have emissions comparable to warm sites in the tropics, despite their cold temperatures. That’s very important when it comes to scaling methane release at a global scale.”....

US Fish and Wildlife Service photo of tundra in the Arctic

How shrubs are reducing the positive contribution of peatlands to climate

The Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL): For the first time, a group of scientists from WSL and EPFL described why on the long run peatlands may not be able to continue fulfilling their role as the most effective carbon stocking ecosystems. They studied the mechanisms behind a phenomenon known as shrub encroachment of peatlands: Complex plant-microbe interactions are at the root of this worldwide vegetation change. The findings have been published online today in Nature Climate Change.

Peatlands (bogs, turf moors) are among the most important ecosystems worldwide for the storage of atmospheric carbon and thus for containing the climate warming process. In the last 30 to 50 years the peat (Sphagnum) mosses, whose decay produces the peat (turf), have come under pressure by vascular plants, mostly small shrubs. A new study by scientists from the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL and from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne describes for the first time what lies behind this change in vegetation and explains why vascular plants are at an advantage over peat (Sphagnum ) mosses in a warmer climate.

The research team closely monitored four peatland sites at altitudes ranging from 600 m to 1900 m over a period of three years. The selected altitudinal gradient reflects the expected changes in climate conditions for the year 2050  in northern Switzerland. They observed that the increase of shrub cover and soil temperature along the altitudinal gradient were responsible for a decrease of almost 50% of the production of new litter by peat mosses, the main contributors to peat accumulation.

The analysis showed that vascular plants can increase the availability of soil nitrogen (a primary nutrient for plant growth) by means of specific compounds contained in their leaves. They exploit the nutrient for their growth through the mediation of specific fungal symbiosis at root level (the mycorrhiza), a process  that becomes more and more frequent when soil temperature increases. At the same time, with higher soil temperature vascular plants release a greater amount of organic matter into the soil through their roots (the so called “root exudates”) and this stimulates the decomposition activity of soil microbes....

A gully with peat moss, shot by Chris Eilbeck, Wikimedia Commons via Geograph UK, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Aceh peat clearing was 'illegal'

Fidelis E. Satriastanti in the Jakarta Globe: A formal government investigation into the clearing of a vast tract of protected peat forest in Aceh has concluded that only one of the two companies involved was at fault, while exonerating a second company of any wrongdoing.

Sudariyono, the deputy for legal compliance at the Environment Ministry, said on Monday that palm oil plantation company Surya Panen Subur 2 “was suspected of burning some 1,183 hectares” of land inside the Tripa peat swamp from March 19 to 24 this year.

“Our suspicion is that a really wide swath of land [was burned] in such a short time, and this indicates that it was systematic, meaning there was an element of intent,” he said.  He added that a second company, Kallista Alam, was believed to have burned some 30 hectares of its 1,605-hectare concession in the peat swamp, but that it was the victim of a bureaucratic foul-up.

“Its permit is suspected to be the problem, because it was issued after the [deforestation] moratorium was implemented,” Sudariyono said.  He added that while the law prohibited the issuance of new concessions on land with peat layers more than three meters deep, the two companies were given concessions for just such an area...

Aceh, sometime between 1890 and 1920, from Wikimedia Commons via the Tropenmuseum

Green groups say Indonesia deforestation ban 'weak'

Yahoo News via AFP: A coalition of green groups in Indonesia on Thursday criticised a moratorium on deforestation as "weak", saying the year-long ban still excludes large tracts of the country's carbon-rich forests.

Greenpeace, which is leading the coalition, said government maps that mark protected areas exclude 3.5 million hectares (8.6 million acres) of peatland -- biodiverse swamp-like forests that hold rich carbon reserves.
Greenpeace said the government must review all existing logging permits on the country's natural forests and peatland, and improve governance based on an accurate set of maps.

"The government cannot hope to improve forest governance and ensure the effectiveness of the moratorium without taking these crucial steps," Greenpeace Southeast Asia political campaigner Yuyun Indradi said in a statement.

An earlier review of the maps by the Union of Concerned Scientists found that the moratorium leaves almost 50 percent of Indonesia's 100 million hectares of natural forest and peatland unprotected....

A NASA satellite view of forest fires on the Indonesian island of Sumatra

Indonesia, greens move to stop eco disaster

TimesLive (South Africa): The Indonesian government and environmentalists have moved to halt the destruction of a peatland forest after activists warned that the endangered Sumatran orangutans in the area have almost been driven to extinction.

A coalition of local and international conservation groups warned last month that orangutans in the Tripa forest on Sumatra island could disappear by the end this year unless action was taken to stop land clearing using fire by plantation companies.

“Palm oil companies have been burning peatlands in violation of Indonesian laws,” said Ian Singleton, director for the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Program. “The situation is urgent and requires action.” The Coalition to Save Tripa, which includes the local group Walhi and Greenpeace, said satellite images from December 26 showed less than 13,000 hectares of the area’s 60,000 hectares of forest remained and at least 40 hotspots indicating fires were detected in May.

...The Ministry of Environment said it was investigating the allegations that palm oil companies operating in the area had broken laws....

The last batch of sawn wood from the peat forest in Indragiri Hulu, Riau Province, Indonesia. Deforestation for oil palm plantation. Shot by Aidenvironment, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Oil sands and loss of carbon-trapping bogs and fens

Jonathan M. Gitlin in Ars Technica: Exploiting the Canadian oil sands to extract their stored hydrocarbons remains controversial. The mix of sand, clay, water, and bitumen that we call the Canadian oil sands might be the second largest oil deposit on the planet. If that didn't make it an attractive target for exploitation, the fact that it's located in a stable, friendly country that shares a land border with the US seals the deal for many. But extracting useable oil from oil sands is much more energy intensive (and expensive) than obtaining it from traditional oil fields, and concerns about the ecological impact remain.

In some ways, the name 'oil sands' is a bit misleading, since the area is not a sandy desert, but peatland, which has to be converted to open-pit surface mines. Although the various mines have to have plans for post-mining land reclamation, it's not possible to return the mines to peatland, and mine operators propose to construct forests and tailing lakes. A new study from the University of Alberta, published in PNAS, has examined the effect of this transformation on carbon sequestration. It doesn't paint a happy picture.

The study's authors compare the pre- and post mining landscapes of the 10 approved mines in Alberta. Prior to mining, 64 percent of the landscape was wetland, with only 24 percent supporting upland vegetation. Only four of the mines (Horizon, Jackpine-Phase 1, Muskeg, and Kearl) had post-mining reclamation plans detailed enough to be able to make a direct comparison.

Of these four mines, the most striking difference pre- and post-mining will be the loss of up to two thirds of the peatland, which will be replaced mainly by upland forest. This means forests of white aspen, jack pine, and trembling aspen will replace the current landscape of fens and bogs with tamarack and black spruce; an undergrowth of blueberries, cranberries and dogwood will replace the mosses.

The plans involve creating lakes from existing tailing ponds, which will be topped up by drainage from the hilly forests. Currently, these tailing ponds are filled with highly contaminated water that was used in the oil extraction process, but this approach appears to be the lesser of two evils; recreating wetlands with the contaminated water would likely increase soil contamination, since the increased surface area will enhance evaporation....

Athabasca oil sands shot by NASA

Conservationists call for urgent restoration of UK peatlands

Severin Carrell in the Guardian (UK): Conservationists have called for urgent action to restore vast areas of peatland across the UK after an inquiry warned that their fate will have severe implications for the climate. The report by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has estimated that the UK's peatlands and peatbogs lock in about 3bn tonnes of CO2, and are a far more significant carbon store than the country's forests. But they are being damaged so seriously that they are putting the UK's climate targets at risk.

The new study, by an IUCN commission of inquiry, has found that losing only 5% of the 2.7m hectares of peatland in Britain, which cover large areas of the Highlands, the Hebrides, the Peak District, the Pennines, Northern Ireland and upland Wales, would be equal to the UK's entire annual carbon emissions. Surveys have already confirmed that peatlands are already releasing significant levels of CO2, with 80% of the UK's peatlands and peatbogs damaged by overgrazing, burning, drainage systems and horticultural extraction.

The IUCN described peatlands as the "Cinderella habitat: overlooked and undervalued".

The rate of damage is also putting the UK's biodiversity obligations under EU law at risk: the European commission has imposed much stricter targets on the UK to repair them by 2020. Clifton Bain, director of the IUCN UK's peatlands programme, told the Guardian: "There's real pressure to get this delivered."...

An unnamed lochan south of Loch Akran in the UK, shot by david glass, Wikimedia Commons via Geograph UK, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Peatland carbon storage is stabilized against catastrophic release of carbon

American Chemical Society: Concerns that global warming may have a domino effect —unleashing 600 billion tons of carbon in vast expanses of peat in the Northern hemisphere and accelerating warming to disastrous proportions — may be less justified than previously thought. That’s the conclusion of a new study on the topic in ACS’ journal Environmental Science & Technology.

Christian Blodau and colleagues explain that peat bogs — wet deposits of partially decayed plants that are the source of gardeners’ peat moss and fuel — hold about one-third of the world’s carbon. Scientists have been concerned that global warming might dry out the surface of peatlands, allowing the release into the atmosphere of carbon dioxide and methane (a greenhouse gas even more potent than carbon dioxide) produced from decaying organic matter. To see whether this catastrophic domino effect is a realistic possibility, the scientists conducted laboratory simulations studying the decomposition of wet bog peat for nearly two years.

Far from observing sudden releases of greenhouse gases, they found that carbon release and methane production slowed down considerably in deeply buried wet peat, most likely because deeper peat is shielded from exchange of water and gases with the atmosphere. In connection with previous work, the study concluded that “even under moderately changing climatic conditions,” peatlands will continue to sequester, or isolate from the atmosphere, their huge deposits of carbon and methane....

Peat exploitation in the nature conservation area (!) of "Ewiges Meer" ("Eternal lake"), a big moor lake in East Frisia, NW Germany. Shot by Christian Fischer, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Soil microbes define dangerous rates of climate change

Seed Daily: The rate of global warming could lead to a rapid release of carbon from peatlands that would further accelerate global warming. Two recent studies published by the Mathematics Research Institute at the University of Exeter highlight the risk that this 'compost bomb' instability could pose, and calculate the conditions under which it could occur.

…The first paper by Catherine Luke and Professor Peter Cox describes the basic phenomenon. When soil microbes decompose organic matter they release heat - this is why compost heaps are often warmer than the air around them.

The compost bomb instability is a runaway feedback that occurs when the heat is generated by microbes more quickly than it can escape to the atmosphere. This in turn requires that the active decomposing soil layer is thermally-insulated from the atmosphere. Catherine Luke explains: "The compost bomb instability is most likely to occur in drying organic soils covered by an insulating lichen or moss layer".

The second paper led by Dr Sebastian Wieczorek and Professor Peter Ashwin, also of the University of Exeter, proves there is a dangerous rate of global warming beyond which the compost bomb instability occurs. This is in contrast to the general belief that tipping points correspond to dangerous levels of global warming....

Càrn na Ceàrdaich. A flat and boggy summit with views across the peatlands towards Ben More. Shot by Richard Webb, Wikimedia Commons via Geograph UK, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Putin to check out new method of smothering peat bog fires

RIA Novosti (Russia): Russian Prime Minister will check out new technology of distinguishing peat bog fires and discuss putting up homes for homeless fire victims during his work visit to Moscow region on August 16, the press service of the Russian government said. The Premier will get acquainted with advanced technology of peat bog irrigation which will allow quenching the peat bog fires, which are now raging across Central Russia, much faster, the statement said.

Moscow region authorities have prepared project of peat bog irrigation at the cost of 20-25 billion rubles ($655-818.5 million), Moscow region's Governor Boris Gromov said earlier. The region has already been allocated 300 million rubles ($9.8 million) for these purposes. Peat bog irrigation commenced in six districts of Moscow region on August 12.

Later in the day, Putin will take part in a meeting dedicated to developing cheap and accessible homes for Russians. Building of new homes for fire victims will also be discussed. The fires ravaging across Russia have already left 3,500 people homeless. Russian authorities have vowed to put up new homes for the fire victims by the end of October….

Smoke and fire across western Russia, satellite image from NASA

Russia's peatland fires seen burning for months

Alister Doyle in Reuters: Some of Russia's smog-causing peatland fires are likely to burn for months, part of a global problem of drained marshes that emit climate-warming greenhouse gases, experts said on Wednesday. Novel carbon markets could offer a long-term fix for peat bogs, from Indonesia to South Africa, if negotiators of a U.N. climate treaty can agree ways to pay to safeguard marshes that are often drained to make way for farms, roads or homes.

"Peat fires continue underground and...they will not be extinguished in Russia before winter rains and snow set in," said Hans Joosten, professor of peatland studies and paleoecology at the University of Greifswald in Germany.

To put out fires "you must inundate the area completely," he said, adding that one peat fire in South Africa near the border with Botswana, for instance, had smoldered for 5 years. Peat is formed from partly decayed vegetation.

Environmental group Wetlands International estimated 80 to 90 percent of the smog in Moscow was from peatland fires near the capital, rather than forest fires linked to what weather officials call Russia's hottest summer in a millennium….

NASA view of Russian fires on August 4, 2010

Why Dmitry Medvedev should turn his attention to Russia's peat bogs

A commentary by Ed Douglas in the Guardian (UK): What's black, squidgy and exhausting to walk on? The answer is peat, the gunk that gives malt whisky its smoky taste and burns sweetly when it's dried out. Dmitry Medvedev is busy just now, having cut short his holiday to deal with Russia's terrifying forest fires, but when he's done the president should think about his country's peat for a while.

Why? Because alongside dozens of forest fires, there are another 56 peat fires, many of them around Moscow, threatening Russia's most densely populated areas. Thanks to extraction and drainage, peat bogs in central Russia have over recent decades dried out, becoming a tinder-box threatening destruction and appalling air pollution. And while winter rains will douse forests, peat fires can burn underground, all winter long.

Not surprisingly, Russian officials are already looking at ways to make their peat wet again, like the project run successfully by Wetlands International in a national park in Moscow's neighbouring Vladimir region. It's a lot cheaper than sending in the fire brigade.

Fixing Russia's peat bogs will do us all a favour because even when it isn't burning, dried-out peat is a disaster. Clearing, draining and setting fire to peatlands for forestry and agriculture releases more than 3bn tons of carbon dioxide each year, equivalent to a gigantic 7% of global emissions from all fossil fuels. There's more carbon locked away in the world's bogs and mires than in all the trees put together.

Yet somehow peat remains the global environment's Cinderella. It hasn't caught the public's imagination in the same way rainforests have. In some countries with peat bogs there isn't even a word for the stuff. This has got to change….

The Russian peat fire smoke visible to NASA's satellites

An end to peat compost

Luke Walsh in edie.net: A phase out of all peat in compost has been put forward by the Government in an effort to cut down emissions of CO2. The plan would mean gardening centres and DIY stores would stop selling peat-based composts for the amateur gardening market within ten years.

The initiative is part of the Act on CO2 campaign and was launched last night (March 8), with the aim of convincing amateur gardeners. who use around 70% of the country's peat, to stop. The campaign focuses on raising awareness of the environmental impacts associated with peat and promoting a switch to peat-free alternatives in order to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and protect the valuable biodiversity and wildlife of lowland raised bogs.

Launching the Act on CO2 campaign at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, which has been peat-free since 1992, Irish celebrity gardener Diarmuid Gavin, said: "Consumers' concern about what they can personally do to help protect the environment is at a record high…..

Chinese garden in the grounds of the Portmeirion estate, where "The Prisoner" was filmed way back when. No sign of Patrick McGoohan or Number 2! This view shot by Eirian Evans, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Burning rainforests release huge amounts of greenhouse gases

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (Germany): Peatlands, especially those in tropical regions, sequester gigantic amounts of organic carbon. Human activities are now having a considerable impact on these wetlands. For example, drainage projects, in combination with the effects of periodic droughts, can lead to large-scale fires, which release enormous amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere, and thus contribute to global warming.

Using laser-based measurements, Professor Florian Siegert and his research group at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich have now estimated the volume of peat burned in such fires with unprecedented accuracy. The new data imply that, in 2006, peatland fires in Indonesia released up to about 900 million metric tons of CO2. This is more than the total amount of CO2 emitted in Germany in that year, and represents about 16 % of the emissions associated with deforestation worldwide. “Our work once again underlines the decisive role played by acutely endangered tropical wetland ecosystems in the context of global warming”, says Siegert. “

…. “It is estimated that, in the tropics, peat swamps cover an area of 30 to 45 million hectares”, says Professor Florian Siegert from the GeoBio-Center of the LMU Munich. “This corresponds to about 10% of the total area of peatlands in the world, and means that tropical peatlands represent one of the largest near-surface storage sites for organic carbon that we have”. – And almost half of this reservoir is located in a single country, Indonesia.

… Left in their natural state, they are simply too wet to burn. But drainage measures and deforestation disturb their ecological equilibrium and make them vulnerable to fire, which is almost always caused by human activities. Private companies often exploit fires to prepare the ground for the establishment of large-scale plantations for the production of wood pulp and palm oil,.

The fires, however, are doubly dangerous. The smoke they produce contains tremendous amounts of aerosols and toxic gases, which can lead to serious health problems in many areas of Southeast Asia. Furthermore, the soil-bound organic carbon is transformed into carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas which plays a leading role in global warming. …

…Most studies on changes in land use and their effects on climate change have considered only total forest biomass. The new data demonstrate that, in future, one must also focus on the biomass that is stored in the soil…..

Thick smoke hung over the island of Borneo when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite passed overhead on October 5, 2006.

Protecting Sumatra's peat lands vital for saving the environment

Jonathan Woodliff in the Jakarta Post: With only 19 days to go before the critical UN climate summit in Copenhagen, environmental activists are right to be highlighting Indonesia's unenviable position as one of the world's largest emitters of greenhouse gases. There is no doubt that long term abuse and mismanagement of the nation's forests is the main cause, which is why Greenpeace set up a "Climate Defenders Camp" on the Kampar Peninsula in Central Sumatra three weeks ago.

Burgeoning population pressures, rampant illegal logging and widespread forest fires release millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which is significantly contributing to the global warming crisis.

When I first flew over the Kampar Peninsula in Riau province eight years ago, massive swathes of natural forest had clearly been destroyed. A complex network of canals had been chiseled out to provide access for illegal loggers. Most of the forest closest to the surrounding water had disappeared, and there was much evidence of devastating slash-and-burn farming. It looked like a free-for-all haven for encroachment, where anyone could take what they wanted, turning the area into a desolate and barren wasteland.

In addition to being home to endangered animal species such as the Sumatran tiger, the clouded leopard and Wallace's hawk eagle, as well as to many local communities who depend on the forest for their livelihoods, this peninsula is one of the largest remaining peat swamps on the planet.

Peat lands play a major role in regulating global climate, acting as "carbon sinks", storing more carbon dioxide per unit area than any other ecosystem. Their protection is absolutely vital if irreversible climate change is to be averted….

A 1556 map of Sumatra