Background
Human activities, including waste disposal, fossil fuel extraction and agriculture on or near peatlands, may affect their capacity to serve as effective nature-based climate solutions. The impacts of past and present natural resource development activities (e.g., oil and natural gas exploration, production, storage and transport) on peatland function (e.g., vegetation productivity) and services (e.g., climate regulation) have received relatively little attention in Canada.
This activity aims to map and characterize human activities within or near boreal peatlands and their impacts on peatland methane emissions.Given that peatlands are among the largest natural methane sources, this activity will enhance our understanding of the potential for peatlands to serve as a nature-based climate solution and support Canada in achieving its climate goals. This activity will:
Activity Outline
- Develop a machine learning framework to identify human activities that act as peatland disturbances from satellite imagery and build a comprehensive spatiotemporal data repository of these disturbances across Canada
- Estimate a possible change in peatland carbon sink-source strength due to disturbances from human activities and its potential impact on the climate system