 |
| Titel |
North Sea coastal peatlands – is a climate-smart revival possible? |
| VerfasserIn |
Ko van Huissteden, Tanya Lippmann, Dimmie Hendriks, Monique Heijmans |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2017
|
| Medientyp |
Artikel
|
| Sprache |
en
|
| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 19 (2017) |
| Datensatznummer |
250146363
|
| Publikation (Nr.) |
 EGU/EGU2017-10387.pdf |
|
|
|
|
|
| Zusammenfassung |
| Coastal peatlands around the southern North Sea basin have been very widespread in the past,
but centuries-long drainage and exploitation for agriculture and fuel has decreased
the peatland area strongly. It has resulted in severe soil subsidence with adverse
effects on flood safety and water quality, and large scale emission of CO2. However,
the remedy of rewetting of drained peatlands that is often proposed, has uncertain
outcomes as it may reduce CO2 emission, but enhance CH4 emission, in some cases
dramatically.
We present greenhouse gas balance examples from two peatland restoration experiments
in the Netherlands. These are experiments with nature conservation as primary goal. These
experiments show that the type of management of vegetation may have a very strong
influence on the CH4 emission. A nutrient-rich wetland dominated by Typha sp. showed
sustained, high emission of CH4 over many years. By contrast, a site where nutrient-rich
topsoil was removed and a mesotrophic fen-like vegetation was established, showed very
minor CH4 emission. The high emissions at the Typha site appears to result from a recently
deposited peat layer of very labile organic matter. A third control site with lower water
table and agricultural grassland showed considerably higher CO2 emission than
the two nature conservation sites. The data from this site also shows the potential
effects of climate extremes: an exceptionally warm and dry period in September
2016 showed an almost doubling of CO2 emission with respect to normal summer
conditions.
The future of coastal peatlands is attracting more attention from policy and spatial
planning. Besides a return to (semi)natural peatland vegetation, there is a growing interest in
agricultural products that allow a high water table (paludiculture). However, the effects of
land use change on the peat greenhouse gas balance are very poorly known. This
calls for more extensive quantification of the greenhouse gas balance under various
management scenarios, which needs to be facilitated by cost-effective methods. At the sites
presented here, we are experimenting with a combination of automated chamber
measurements and development of a predictive model that combines hydrological
modeling with modeling of the peat soil carbon balance and vegetation succession |
|
|
|
|
|
|