A new paper, co-authored by Ecohydrology Research Group members Eunji Byun, Fereidoun Rezanezhad, Linden Fairbairn, Steph Slowinski, and Philippe Van Cappellen has been published in Scientific Reports. The paper is titled “Temperature, moisture and freeze-thaw controls on CO2 production in soil incubations from northern peatlands” and assesses the impact of climate warming on winter carbon losses in peatland ecosystems. In this study, CO2 production rates were measured in laboratory incubations with soils from seven Canadian peatland sites in the boreal and temperate bioclimatic vegetation zones (or ‘ecoclimates’). The results of this study show the statistically significant variations in the temperature sensitivity of peat soil CO2 production rates between the cold-temperate and boreal ecoclimate zones. The new findings in this study highlight that the variable temperature sensitivities under different climate conditions need to be accounted for when assessing future global trajectories of peatland carbon pool stability.
The study was part of the “Winter Carbon Losses in Wetland Ecosystems under Current and Future Climates” project within the “Advancing Climate Change Science in Canada” initiative funded jointly by Environment and Climate Change Canada, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), and Health Canada. Results of this work will be integrated into the Canadian Model for Peatlands (CaMP) to improve national estimates of net ecosystem exchanges and carbon emissions during the non-growing season.
The article can be found here.