The Newsletter

Can-Peat Local Contexts Guide Part 1 is now available

Data and information about Canadian peatlands are valuable to a wide range of knowledge users concerned about the future of peatlands in the country. The Can-Peat project is particularly interested in information related to carbon storage and greenhouse gas exchange in Canadian peatlands to inform Canada’s climate action plan. To achieve that goal, many of the Can-Peat activities aim to make Canadian peatland data more findable and accessible, while also working to support Indigenous data sovereignty. One step that Can-Peat is taking towards this goal is using the Local Contexts Hub as a tool to help identify Indigenous data in its research activities.

To help researchers get started, we are holding a series of drop-in sessions about registering for and using the Local Contexts Hub. These drop-in sessions will be held on Teams on October 21 from 11 am–12 pm ET, October 29, 1–2 pm ET and November 6, 3–4 pm ET. Contact canpeat@uwaterloo.ca if you’d like to attend a drop-in session and need a meeting invitation.

Since the Industrial Revolution, human activities have released significant amounts of greenhouse gases (GHGs) such as carbon dioxide and methane, driving climate change. Methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is responsible for about 25 per cent of the global warming we experience today. Although methane remains in the atmosphere for about a decade, it has a global warming potential 29.8 times greater than carbon dioxide over 100 years. In the near future however, it will be 82.5 times more potent than carbon dioxide over 20 years due to its short lifetime. This makes reducing methane emissions a highly effective strategy for mitigating climate change.

In Canada, policies have been implemented to reduce methane emissions from human activities, but setting meaningful reduction targets requires accurate estimates of current emissions. Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) publishes annual National Inventory Reports (NIR) detailing greenhouse gas emissions, including methane, by sector and region. However, these reports lack a critical piece of information: a detailed map of methane emissions across the country.

Big changes are happening in Canada's Arctic region because of climate change. The ground that used to be permanently frozen (called permafrost) is thawing at an increasing rate. This accelerated thaw has significant consequences for the landscape, affecting the stability of infrastructure and the functioning of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. The latter includes changing the movement of water and carbon between the land and the atmosphere, with global implications.

Can-Peat is pleased to welcome Dr. Iqra Naeem who will be joining us as project manager on August 5, 2024 to cover Kim Kleinke's maternity leave.

This year’s CGU meeting was held jointly with the annual meeting of the Canadian Society of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology and provided an exciting opportunity for Can-Peat participants to share first results of their research. 

Following this year's success, the public Peatland Science Symposium jointly held with PERG will return on Feb. 19, 2025, in Kananaskis, Alberta followed by the Can-Peat annual meeting Feb. 20-21.

Can-Peat is divided into activities to achieve our 5 project goals. 11 out of 16 research activities are now underway. Visit our activity page to learn more about our research efforts and meet our dedicated graduate students and postdocs.

This year's annual meeting built on the main themes of the project discussed at our 2023 Kickoff such as Indigenous engagement and data sovereignty and accessibility. We also met with our advisory committees to discuss the project's direction and progress.

Drs. Rezanezhad and Van Cappellen of Can-Peat have published a paper in Geoderma on synthesis data analysis investigating the spatial distribution pattern of temperature sensitivity (Q10) of peat respiration and its correlation with climate conditions, soil properties, and hydrology. 

Can-Peat is excited to announce our annual meeting on February 20-22 in Quebec City. Although the main meeting is for members only, we are hosting a public Peatland Science Symposium jointly with the Peatland Ecology Research Group (PERG). Additionally, the outcomes will be shared in the next newsletter so stay tuned!

Dr. Saraswati, formally of Dr. Strack's research group, currently of the Ecohydrology Research Group, wins NSERC Banting fellowship.

For more information: https://uwaterloo.ca/ecohydrology/news/saraswati-wins-prestigious-nserc-banting-postdoctoral

Looking for terrestrial or aquatic CO2 and CH4 fluxes, and supporting enviro data
Deadline: December, 2023
On behalf of the ABCflux team

Katie Hettinga, starting her MSc in September, shares her experiences at the RE3 conference and GPI/Can-Peat workshop. 

Have you deposited your datasets into databases? Can-Peat, with PhD candidate Maryam Bayatvarkeshi, is working to improve peatland data accessibility.

Communication and cross-discipline collaboration is often limited to the same groups leading to duplicated efforts and missed synergies. To improve this, Can-Peat is developing a public list of Canadian peatland projects.

Submit your project here!

By Nancy Goucher

Can-Peat: Peatlands as nature-based climate solutions got down to work at its first annual workshop held in Waterloo, ON at the end of January 2023. The meeting brought together 36 researchers, NGOs, industry, government and Indigenous communities from across Canada to discuss plans for meeting their ambitious goals which include creating a Canadian peatland network, developing a database to house peatland carbon data, advancing peatland carbon models, and identifying mechanisms for implementing peatland nature-based solutions.

By Christopher Schulze 

In June 2019, a peatland burned near my long-term peatland research site in northernmost Alberta. This changed my PhD, as I and my supervisors David Olefeldt (University of Alberta) and Oliver Sonnentag (Université de Montréal) realized that this presented a rare opportunity.

By Marissa Davies

My project aims to test how the timing and combination of treatments impacts peatland carbon losses and recovery from fire using the Canadian Model for Peatlands (CaMP), which tracks carbon pools and fluxes pre- and post-disturbances. This work will support continued field studies and explore recovery trajectories on timescales of 50-100 years. My work will also help to include more fire scenarios within CaMP that can be used to predict carbon losses from fire at a national scale.

By Kayla Martin

My work focuses on Can-Peat's second objective of developing a data repository. For my data compilation, I am combing peatland carbon data from six sites across Alberta and Quebec with more sites to come.

The Can-Peat newsletter will be published four times a year. Articles will focus on research updates, upcoming events, and research team profiles.

We also hope to include features and updates from our partners, collaborators, and the broader Canadian peatland community so if you have an idea for article or have a great photo, please get in touch at canpeat@uwaterloo.ca!

Can-Peat has two advisory committees, the Science and Policy Advisory Board and the Indigenous Advisory Council, to guide the research and outreach, ensuring good science and ethical practices. Please welcome our new members.

Across Canada, and internationally, peatlands are subject to significant human disturbances, such as agricultural drainage, forestry drainage, peat extraction, and oil sands mining, which may convert them into a significant carbon (C) source, thus jeopardized their climate mitigation function.