Background
National activities from federal agencies such as Natural Resources Canada and Environment Climate Change Canada have been initiated within the past decade to improve mapping of wetlands in Canada and related peatland carbon content. Provincial and non-governmental agencies have also developed regional initiatives to improve knowledge on peatlands and their related carbon estimates. A better quantification of recent carbon stocks is fundamental to improve our knowledge on potential future carbon sink and related radiative forcing under different present-day and future anthropogenic and environmental (climate) pressures. There remain important gaps throughout Canada on the extent of new peat forming and where the fate of carbon is uncertain; those data are critical for future projections.
Activity Outline
- Collate and standardize existing peat core paleoecological data as currently developed in Garneau’s lab (database to be published in EEES), in combination with data published in open-access databases such as Pangaea (www.pangeae.de) and Neotoma (www.neotomadb.org) and other published and unpublished data
- Quantify total carbon stocks since the last glaciation to map the existing carbon sink of peatlands in Canada using a current synthesis of recent accumulated carbon stocks (< 150 years) from high boreal and subarctic peatlands