Richard Petrone appointed editor of special collection on peatland conservation and restoration
Water Institute member, Richard Petrone, has been appointed guest editor for a special collection in Scientific Reports.
Professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Management and Director of the Hydrometeorology Research Group at the University of Waterloo, Dr. Petrone said he was honoured to be selected as a guest editor for the special collection on Peatlands conservation and restoration.
Richard Petrone, Professor, Department of Geography and Environmental Management, Director, Hydrometeorology Research Group.
Part of the Springer Nature portfolio, Scientific Reports is the 5th most-cited journal in the world, publishing interdisciplinary research across all areas of the natural sciences, psychology, medicine and engineering.
Professor Petrone joins co-editors Vasile Ersek (Northumbria University, UK), Nick Girkin (Cranfield University, UK), Minna Väliranta (University of Helsinki, Finland) and Dylan Young (University of Leeds, UK) on the special collection.
The special collection is an excellent opportunity to bring together leading research on diverse aspects of peatland conservation and restoration, highlighting the interdisciplinarity of these areas of research.
The collection which has six articles published to date, features original research on peatland biodiversity, ecology, conservation and restoration, as well as work on the global impact of these ecosystems.
Peatlands are a peculiar terrestrial ecosystem whose soil is submerged in water, leading to an extremely slow decomposition of biomass. Although peatlands only occupy about 3% of the surface of the Earth, it is estimated that they hold about one third of the total Carbon, thus making them key elements to achieve the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. However, in order to increase soil exploration for intensive agriculture and industry, a large portion of peatlands worldwide have been drained for agricultural and other industry purposes, leading to significant releases of CO2 to the atmosphere in a short period of time. More recently, efforts have been undertaken in order to restore some of these ecosystems through re-wetting, a process that will likely take several centuries to accomplish.
Professor Petrone is also co-PI in the Climate Action and Awareness Fund project “Can-Peat: Canada's peatlands as nature-based climate solutions”, funded through the Government of Canada’s Environmental Damages Fund and administered by Environment and Climate Change Canada. Can-Peat aims to quantify the potential of peatland management in Canada to climate change mitigation, supporting Canada's commitment to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.
He is an editorial board member of 2 other scientific journals: Nature Scientific Reports, and Hydrological Processes.