Carbon storage capacity of tropical peatlands in natural and artificial drainage networks
Name
Cobb_2020_Environ._Res._Lett._15_114009.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
3.87 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
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Author(s)
Cobb, Alexander R
Dommain, René
Tan, Fangyi
Hwee En Heng, Naomi
Harvey, Charles F
Date Issued
October 2020
Journal
Environmental Research Letters
Publisher
IOP Publishing
Citation
Alexander R Cobb et al, Carbon storage capacity of tropical peatlands in natural and artificial drainage networks, 2020 Environ. Res. Lett. 15 114009. © 2020 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Tropical peatlands store over 75 gigatons of carbon as organic matter that is protected from decomposition and fire by waterlogging if left undrained. Over millennia, this organic matter builds up between channels or rivers into gently mounded shapes called peat domes. Measurements of peat accumulation and water flow suggest that tropical peat domes approach a steady state in which the peat surface morphology is described by a uniform curvature, setting a limit on the carbon that a peatland can store. We explored the maximum amount of carbon that can accumulate as water-saturated peat in natural and artificial drainage networks of northwest and southern Borneo. We find that the maximum volume of peat accumulation in a channel-bounded parcel is proportional to the square of the parcel area times a scale-independent factor describing the shape of the parcel boundary. Thus, carbon capacity per area scales roughly with mean parcel area in the peatland. Our analysis provides a tool that can be used to predict the long-term impacts of artificial drainage, and to devise optimal strategies for arresting fires and greenhouse gas emissions in tropical peatlands.
MIT Department
Singapore-MIT Alliance in Research and Technology (SMART)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ABA867
