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The Role of Peatlands and Their Carbon
Storage Function in the Context of Climate
Change
Kamila M. Harenda, Mariusz Lamentowicz, Mateusz Samson
and Bogdan H. Chojnicki
Abstract Peatlands are unique habitats that are covering around 3% of the land
area and they are characterized by high sensitivity to climate. These very complex
ecosystems impact both water and carbon cycle at local as well as global scale.
Peatlands are also valuable ecosystems due to their mitigating features in terms of
floods or soil erosion and they can store and filtrate water in the landscape as well.
As a result of high moisture they can also gather a big amount of carbon and this
ability makes peatlands climate coolers. On the other hand a stored carbon can be
released into the atmosphere due to peat moisture decrease and it accelerate the
global warming processes. Beside climate changes, peatlands are under pressure
that is caused by human activities like land use changes or fires. Peatlands pro-
tection and restoration can both mitigate climate changes and water balance dis-
turbances. A review of peatlands status and feature in the context of climate
changes and human-induced disturbances are presented in this paper.
Keywords Peatlands protection and restoration Carbon storage
Climate change
K. M. Harenda (&)M. Samson B. H. Chojnicki
Meteorology Department, Poznan University of Life Sciences, Piątkowska 94,
60-649 Poznań, Poland
e-mail: kamilaharenda@gmail.com
M. Lamentowicz
Department of Biogeography and Palaeoecology, Faculty of Geographical
and Geological Sciences, Adam Mickiewicz University, Ul. B. Krygowskiego 10,
61 680 Poznań, Poland
M. Lamentowicz
Laboratory of Wetland Ecology and Monitoring, Faculty of Geographical
and Geological Sciences, Adam Mickiewicz University, B. Krygowskiego 10,
PL 61 680 Poznań, Poland
©Springer International Publishing AG 2018
T. Zielinski et al. (eds.), Interdisciplinary Approaches for Sustainable
Development Goals, GeoPlanet: Earth and Planetary Sciences,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71788-3_12
169
1 Introduction
Water is the basic component of many processes on the Earth and its permanent
presence in the landscape causes the emerging of many unique and valuable
habitats such as peatlands. They are very sensitive ecosystems that arise due to
organic matter accumulation and high water table (Kulczyński 1949; Whiting and
Chanton 2001; Keddy 2002; Erwin 2009; Rydin and Jeglum 2013). The main factor
is inundation, which stimulates peat forming (mainly by anaerobic processes).
Globally, peatland habitats are rare (Gorham 1991; Keddy 2002) since they
cover approximately 3% of the land area on the Earth (Clymo et al. 1998; Blodau
2002; Rydin and Jeglum 2013) and store one-third of global soil carbon (Gorham
1991; Lappalainen 1996; Page et al. 2011; Rydin and Jeglum 2013). Most peatlands
are located in the northern hemisphere (around 80% in the boreal and subarctic
zones), 10% can be found in the tropics and Southeast Asia and another 10% are
located in the temperate zone (Yu et al. 2010, Frolking et al. 2011, Tobolski 2012).
Figure 1shows peatlands distribution on the Earth (Main Report 2007).
The classification of peatlands can be very complex, yet the simplest one con-
sists of four types of peatlands (Keddy 2002):
•Swamp—dominated by trees with roots in hydric soils (not in peat), like tropical
mangrove swamps.
•Marsh—dominated by herbaceous plants emerging through the water and rooted
in hydric soils (not in peat), like reed beds around the Baltic Sea.
•Bog—dominated by Sphagnum moss, shrubs, sedges or evergreen trees with
roots in deep peat, like floating bogs covering shores of lakes in temperate and
boreal regions.
•Fen—dominated by sedges and grasses rooted in the peat and considerable
water movement through the peat is noticed, like the extensive peatlands in
northern Canada.
Fig. 1 Percentage peatlands distribution per country (Main Report 2007)
170 K. M. Harenda et al.
Peatland’s ecological functions can have direct and/or indirect effects. The first
group of functions is related to water, including: storage, filtration and supply. They
also mitigate floods and prevent erosion. They stabilize the macroclimate and play
an ecological function. Due to their ability to retain water, peatlands often prevent
drought (Tobolski 2012). Indirect functions include nutrient retention, carbon
storage, and sediment retention. Peatlands provide water to other ecosystems and
they are rich in biological diversity (genetic reservoirs of many organisms). Their
unique features create habitats suitable for many endemic and/or endangered spe-
cies of plants and animals and they can form ecological corridors enabling
migration (Mäkiläand Saarnisto 2008). Peatlands can be considered as sources of
humus in the landscape (Keddy 2002;Mäkiläand Saarnisto 2008). Peatlands can be
also considered as an archive of past climates due to their sensitivity to weather and
capability of long term conservation of produced biomass (Clymo et al. 1998). The
carbon accumulation process in the peat appears when the rate of organic matter
decomposition is lower than the amount of primary production of the ecosystem. In
their natural state, peatlands are usually carbon sinks (Turunen et al. 2002;Mäkilä
and Saarnisto 2008) and this feature makes these ecosystems very important ele-
ments of the environment in the context of climate change, since the absorbed CO
2
is one of the major greenhouse gases. Furthemore, peatlands possess unexplored
diversity of protists playing important role in this ecosystem (Marcisz et al. 2014;
Geisen et al. 2017; Mulot et al. 2017) They contribute to carbon fixing, however
this issue still needs scientific investigation (Jassey et al. 2015,2016).
Analyses of modern and palaeoenvironmental data identify peatlands as an
element of nature that is predicted to affect future climate. Therefore, further
research, protection and restoration of these vulnerable ecosystems should be a
priority in the context of global warming (Dise 2010; De Jong et al. 2010;
Lamentowicz et al. 2016). The maintenance of those peatlands’functions requires
the appropriate management and conservation. This paper contains the overview of
peatland’s function in the context of future environmental changes and the inter-
actions between the climate and these valuable ecosystems.
2 Carbon Dynamics in Peatlands
Despite the fact that peatlands cover relatively small area of the land, their role in
the global carbon cycle is not insignificant (Frolking et al. 1998; Moore et al. 1998;
Yu et al. 2011; Charman et al. 2013; Loisel et al. 2014). There are several processes
in the peatlands where carbon is involved, such as CO
2
the exchange with the
atmosphere, the emission of CH
4
, the production and export of dissolved organic
carbon (DOC) and others (Moore et al. 1998). Furthermore, peatlands are very
important stores of temporarily sequestered carbon (Clymo et al. 1998; Ilnicki and
Iwaniszyniec 2002; Rydin and Jeglum 2013).
The Role of Peatlands and Their Carbon Storage Function …171
The carbon balance of peatlands is basically determined by two processes,
photosynthesis and respiration. There are several factors that determine the process
of photosynthesis including solar radiation, CO
2
, water, air temperature and
nutrients (Maćkowiak and Michalak 2008). The carbon compounds enter into
peatland biomass through this process. Further transformation of this biomass is
deeply dependent on hydrology. High humidity of the soil leads to anoxic condi-
tions that slow down the decomposition processes of organic matter. The peat is
formed as a result of those processes - production (photosynthesis) and decom-
position (respiration) and a clear, negative correlation between those opposite
processes is observed (Clymo 1984;Mäkiläand Saarnisto 2008). Decomposition is
the second controlling factor of carbon accumulation. This makes the peatlands
more sensitive to climatic changes than to plant composition changes (Ise et al.
2008). In general, it was found that the lowest carbon accumulation was observed at
the sites with the lowest water table e.g. forested and sparsely forested mires while
the highest sequestration rate was observed in young Sphagnum peatland in coastal
regions. These costal peatlands are good examples of high carbon accumulation rate
since the Sphagnum production is mainly controlled by the moisture that is trans-
ported from the sea (Mäkiläand Saarnisto 2008). Under the present climate con-
ditions, differences between the carbon accumulation ability of different types of
peatlands are noticeable. The boreal raised peatlands are currently a carbon sink
(Turunen et al. 2002), whereas the northern circumpolar wet aapa-mires are source
of greenhouse gases and their carbon accumulation rate is lower than most southern
raised bogs (Mäkiläand Saarnisto 2008).
In addition, part of pristine areas, mainly tropical and permafrost, may no longer
accumulate the peat because of recent climate changes (Main Report 2007).
Peatlands are second only to oceans natural stock of carbon and they can contain
twice as much carbon than the entire world’s biomass (Rydin and Jeglum 2013).
This is the effect of high carbon concentration in the peat (approx. 50%). Peatland
ecosystems are characterized by low productivity but long-term storage. However,
the length of the storage time depends on the wetness of the substrate (Strack 2008).
In general, the absorption of CO
2
from the atmosphere over 12,000 years
allowed for the large quantity storage of carbon in the peat (Yu et al. 2010). The
global estimation of the peatland’s carbon storage is problematic mainly due to the
difficulties of precisely defining the area of peatlands and the assessment of
the thickness of peat layer. Recently, large areas of peatlands were also discovered
inter alia in Peruvian Pastaza-Marañón (Draper et al. 2014) and the Congo Basin
(Dargie et al. 2017). These findings determined the increase of the estimation of
tropical peatland carbon stock by 36%, to 104.7 GtC (Dargie et al. 2017). Currently
the global amount of carbon that is stored in the peat is estimated to exceed 600 GtC
and the sizes of northern, southern and tropical stocks are approximately 550 GtC,
15 GtC and 100 GtC, respectively (Yu et al. 2010;Köchy et al. 2015; Abrams
2016; Kleinen et al. 2016).
The amount of this resource is inter alia the result of ice ages when the peat-
lands’role in the global carbon cycle was clearly noticeable. The CO
2
concentration
in the atmosphere during this period dropped by approx. 100 ppm and one of the
172 K. M. Harenda et al.
explanations of this fact was high water saturation of the high-latitude soils that
slowed down the rate of organic matter decomposition (Zech et al. 2011). This
factor has the biggest importance in the carbon accumulation process in the soil.
When the climate was getting warmer (after the glacial period), the permafrost
started to disappear and the result of this process was the emission of trapped soil
carbon both in gas (CO
2
and CH
4
) and dissolved in water (DOC-dissolved organic
carbon and POC-particulate organic carbon) forms (Limpens et al. 2008; Billett
et al. 2010). Simultaneously, higher concentrations of CO
2
in the atmosphere and
higher air temperature during summer improved the effectiveness of the photo-
synthetic process that induced a rapid growth of vegetation. The high latitude areas
that were released from the ice cover became a suitable environment for new
peatlands to form. Due to continuous spatial expanding of peatlands during the
early Holocene period years ago, a noticeable drop in CO
2
concentration was found
(Zech et al. 2011). The linkage between thawing permafrost and expanding forest
was also found. When the ice was melting down and peatlands of Arctic North
America and Eurasia were releasing the greenhouse gases, the expansion of forests
northward into tundra compensated for this emission (Mäkiläand Saarnisto 2008).
It was also found that local environmental factors and natural succession of
peatlands may attenuate the regional relationships between climatic factors and
observed stratigraphical and hydrological changes of peatlands in Finland (Mäkilä
and Saarnisto 2008).
3 Hydrology
The minimum ambient temperature provides the conditions for peatland growth if
the proper amount of water is available (Yu et al. 2009). Therefore, water, in the
context of peatlands, is considered a first-order factor determining their occurrence,
growth and development (Keddy 2002). The water balance of peatland basically
consists of precipitation, evapotranspiration, runoff and retention and the climate
solely regulates all presented elements (Charman and Mäkilä2003;Mäkiläand
Saarnisto 2008). In the temperate climate conditions, water is the most important
ecological factor that determines two types of peatlands: rheotrophic mires (fens)
that are fed directly by both rain- and ground-water flow, and ombrotrophic mires
(raised bogs) that rely on water input only in the form of rainfall (Moore et al. 1998;
Tobolski 2012). In the case of ombrotrophic raised bogs it is impossible to detect
the impact of surface runoff and groundwater so the only reasonable components of
the water balance are precipitation and evapotranspiration (Charman and Mäkilä
2003).
Peat growth is related to the amount of precipitation and temperature, thus the
changes in the hydrology can be studied by analyzing the changes of the peat
accumulation rate in the peat profile (Yu et al. 2009). Paleoecological studies show
The Role of Peatlands and Their Carbon Storage Function …173
that more peat was accumulated during wet periods in Holocene and it had an effect
of the higher growth of existing peatlands as well as their proliferation in the
landscape (Yu et al. 2003). Conversely, during the Holocene’s dry periods the rate
of carbon accumulation dropped to about half of the present level. These changes
caused by the precipitation reduction were found at both the northern and tropical
peatlands (Strack 2008). These findings make the peatlands very large natural
carbon stock highly vulnerable and susceptible to any changes of hydrological
cycles (Erwin 2009; Belyea and Malmer 2004; Clymo et al. 1998; Dise et al. 2011).
The complexity of peatland’s functions and its high vulnerability to many factors
impede the detailed assessment of the future dynamics of these ecosystems.
Nowadays, palaeoecological and observational studies strongly suggest that peat-
lands will be affected mainly by climate change and human determined distur-
bances (Turetsky et al. 2002; Mauquoy and Yeloff 2007;Yu2007; Lamentowicz
et al. 2008).
4 Climate Change
Climate change can be considered as both natural (Erwin 2009) and anthropogenic
(IPCC 2013) and it has been associated with a range of weather-related disasters,
including droughts, windstorms, ice storms and wildfires (Canadian University of
Waterloo report). Moreover, some climate changes will certainly have impact on
peatlands’hydrology but other changes may cause an increase in local and regional
temperature, alter evapotranspiration, biogeochemistry, amounts of suspended
sediment loadings, fire, oxidation of organic sediments and the physical effects of
wave energy (Erwin 2009; Burkett and Kusler 2002). Global air temperatures
increased by about 0.7 °C during the period of 1906–2005 (IPCC 2013).
Furthermore, on the basis of general climate models scientists predict that the
temperature will increase by additional 2–8 °C by the end of the 21st century,
depending on the region (Christensen et al. 2007; IPCC 2013; Erwin 2009). IPCC
also predicts changes in precipitation that consider both extreme rainfall periods and
periods of drought (IPCC 2013).
Recently, global estimation of carbon loss from the upper soil horizon due to
1 °C increase varies from 30 to 203 GtC by 2050 (Crowther et al. 2016). This
temperature could induce a global increase in heterotrophic respiration of 0.038–
0.100 GtC per year (Dorrepaal et al. 2009). Moreover, the amount of global CH
4
emission from the peatlands is estimated at approximately 0.123 GtC per year. Due
to the fact that at high latitudes the air temperature will increase to a greater extent
in the next century, the emissions of CH
4
from the northern areas can increase
disproportionately (Bridgham et al. 2013). It is believed we can expect even bigger
loss of carbon in the form of methane in the future.
174 K. M. Harenda et al.
5 Fires
The role of peatland fires in the carbon cycle deserves increased scientific attention
(Gorham 1991; Strack 2008). Recently, scientists have observed the climate
warming causing longer and more severe drought periods that in the near future
may result in higher fire activity (Higuera 2015; Kettridge et al. 2015). These heat
waves may amplify the fire activity in peatlands and lead to a release of huge
amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere (Turetsky et al. 2011,2015). The
enormous load of carbon that has remained in peat over millennia will be converted
into the atmospheric part of the global carbon cycle. The peat fires can be also the
source of non-CO
2
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. For instance, anoxic
conditions present at peatlands result from the fact that fires of these ecosystems can
emit around ten times more CH
4
per unit of combusted biomass than fires of
savannas (Yokelson et al. 1997; Andreae and Merlet 2001; Christian et al. 2003).
These increased GHG emissions may cause the intensification of the greenhouse
effect and lead to rising temperatures which intensify the frequency of climate
determined fires. This positive feedback is amplified by more frequent boreal for-
ests fires (Randerson et al. 2006; Flanningan et al. 2001). Moreover, peatland fires
can smolder for months due to the thick peat layer and pose a threat of further fires
in the vicinity of peatlands (Benscoter et al. 2015). These conditions can be
observed, especially in autumn when the peat moisture is relatively low (The
Guardian 2016). The peat destroyed by the fire is the source of mineral compounds
in the environment (Strack 2008). Thus, this temporary heavy fertilization results in
the withdrawal of plants not adapted to such conditions (Kuhry 1994; Sillasoo et al.
2011). The presence of permafrost in the peat profiles of the northern peatlands
effectively limits the depth of peat burning but the projections of its thawing
reduces the fire resistance of these ecosystems (Natural Resources Canada 2016).
Recently, the tropical peatlands destruction became an important environmental
issue. These usually pristine ecosystems were systematically destroyed by drainage
and burning and these activities altered their water and carbon retention capabilities.
As a result, the peatlands’carbon balance was shifting from a sink to a source
(Wösten et al. 1997; Page et al. 2002; Canadell et al. 2007; Rieley et al. 1996). Page
et al. 2002 estimate that due to big fires in 1997 the dried peatlands of Indonesia
released 0.8–2.6 GtC both from peat and vegetation, which represents around
13–40% of the mean annual global carbon emissions from burning of fossil fuels in
the world. As a result, in 1997–2009 the contribution of peatland fires to total global
emissions increased from 4% to 5% (Werf et al. 2010). Tropical peatlands fire with
vegetation changes have a meaningful impact on the carbon cycle, the atmosphere,
the ecosystem services and they cause wide-ranging social and economic impacts
too. Recently, fires at extensive tropical peatlands have become more regular and
the biggest ones were linked with the El Niño phase of ENSO that causes long
drought periods (Page et al. 2009a). Rapid land use changes and climatic variability
led to an increase of fire frequency in recent decades. In addition, highly variable,
The Role of Peatlands and Their Carbon Storage Function …175
from year to year, carbon emission from this source will not be balanced by
peatland’s regrowth that follow the fire (Werf et al. 2010).
Peatlands and their carbon stock can be also affected by fires of the vegetation in
the surrounding areas. Fires causing local or regional deforestation affect hydrology
of peatlands of different size—from small kettle-hole peatlands to extensive raised
bogs. It was shown for example that large fires of the Notećforest in W Poland
caused not only hydrological changes (wet shift/aqualysis) but also triggered
floating mats development in some wetlands (Lamentowicz et al. 2015).
Furthermore, a high-resolution study by Marcisz et al. (2015) revealed how
important might be an indirect impact of fires in a peatland catchment that was also
inferred recently from a peat core in S Poland (Kajukalo et al. 2016).
6 Peatlands Reduction
The disappearance of peatlands from the landscape had various spatial and temporal
intensity but it was always caused by the economic and/or vital needs of human.
Peatlands are potential farming areas thus they have been disturbed or completely
degraded by human activities over the last two centuries. Those transformations
were initially realized in Europe. For instance, 90% of peatlands in Switzerland
disappeared mainly due to conversion to agricultural, garden and vegetable crops
(Tobolski 2012; Lamentowicz et al. 2007).
This land-use change was mainly done by drainage that causes water table level
instabilities. This factor led to deeper aeration of acrotelm that resulted in abrupt
change - the replacement of plant communities and substantial transformation of the
peatland ecosystem (Milecka et al. 2016). The peat extraction for fuel and industrial
purposes is the second reason of peatland reduction (Strack 2008). There are large
quantities of peat harvested for electricity production in Finland, Ireland and
Sweden (World Energy Council 2013). Peatlands also disappear from the landscape
due to transformation in order to change the landscape retention e.g. river valley
flooding purposes or by irresponsible destruction e.g. the solid minerals, petroleum
and natural gas mining (Tobolski 2012). A good example of the negative impact of
mining activity was recently observed in the destruction of peatlands in Canada.
The preparation of these areas for bituminous sand mines caused the release of
around 11.4–4.73 million tons of stored carbon (Rooney et al. 2011).
Recently, socio-economic changes in Southern Asia caused enormous damage of
tropical peatlands (Page et al. 2009b). The average peat thickness of tropical
peatlands is around 5 m (maximum depths are over 20 m) while the mean thickness
of peat observed at higher latitudes is lower than in Finland which is around 1.2 m
(Page et al. 2011, Tropical peatlands-University of Helsinki). A place of special
importance in the context of climate protection is South-eastern Asia. Peatlands in
this region are significant terrestrial carbon storage, both in aboveground biomass
and thick deposits of peat (Page et al. 2009a; Hamada et al. 2013).
176 K. M. Harenda et al.
In addition, tropical peatlands have far greater ability to accumulate carbon.
Although they represent only 10% of the world’s peatlands, they are responsible for
up to 37% of this potential. Tropical peatlands also contain 10 times more carbon
per hectare than ecosystem on mineral soils, whereas subpolar and boreal zone
peatlands contain 3.5 and 7 times more carbon, respectively (Strack 2008).Tropical
peatlands are an important component of the global terrestrial carbon resource
because they store around 20% of carbon of all peatlands in the world in both their
aboveground biomass and underlying thick deposits of peat (Page et al. 2011,
Tropical peatlands-University of Helsinki).
Nowadays most of these ecosystems are systematically destroyed mainly by
preparing the soil for palm oil plantations. These land use changes are realized by
deforestation, fire and drainage because dry peat is much more prone to wildfires
(Werf et al. 2010). This unprecedented scale of destruction converts the peatlands
into a big source of atmospheric CO
2
(Moore et al. 2013; Page et al. 2011; Hooijer
et al. 2010; Yale Environment 2017). Due to land use changes in 1990–2015, the
carbon reservoir in tropical southeastern peatlands has decreased by about 2.5 GtC
which corresponds to several hundred or even several thousand years of carbon
accumulation in peatlands (Miettinen et al. 2017).
Moreover, the rate of peat exploitation is more than twice as fast as in its
formation and it causes the decrease of peat by approximately 20 km
3
(Main Report
2007). These disturbances also modify the peat carbon dynamics due to the fact that
since 1990, southeast Asian disturbed peatlands caused a 32% increase in fluvial
organic carbon flux. This increase is more than half of the entire annual fluvial
organic carbon flux from all European peatlands. Moreover, altering the structure of
peatlands causes higher DOC release from deep peat layers that were formed
thousands of years ago (Moore et al. 2013).
Total peat destruction would be equivalent to 100 years of coal burning at
current rates. Additionally, the part of peatlands (including tropical and northern
permafrost ones) doesn’t accumulate peat anymore due to global warming.
Consequently, the actual rate of carbon accumulation by all peatlands over the
world does not exceed 0.1 GtC per year (Main Report 2007).
7 Peatlands Protection and Restoration
The enormous scale of destruction of these ecologically valuable elements of nature
raised concerns and questions about the fate of these carbon depots and the inter-
action between the climate and peatlands in the future (Joosten et al. 2017; Bonn
et al. 2016).
There are two modes of peatland’s protection, passive and active (Tobolski
2012). The passive protection consists of total or maximum exclusion of human
activities with the exception of preventing adverse changes introduced into the
The Role of Peatlands and Their Carbon Storage Function …177
ecosystems by human activity. Usually it is realized by the introduction of different
conservation strategies. The active protection is applied at the objects where human
intervention is necessary. It leads to the preservation of peatlands along with rare
and peat-forming peatland species. For example, mowing is introduced in order to
stop vegetation succession on meadows (Hedberg et al. 2013; Kotowski et al. 2016)
or even removal of the humified peat from degraded fens (Klimkowska et al. 2010).
Moreover, large scale, long-term projects were utilized to restore raised bogs in N
Poland (Herbichowa 2007).
Peatland protection is also carried out on different spatial scales. For example,
the Ramsar convention that is the global intergovernmental treaty (adopted in 1971)
provided the framework for conservation and wise use of peatlands (Erwin 2009;
Matthews 1993). It was one of the first modern legal instruments to conserve
natural resources on a global scale. It links the countries and restrains from
unreasonable exploitation of natural ecosystems. This convention’s standards of
wise use principles of management and protection were adopted in the international
arrangements and the national laws (Matthews 1993). The Natura 2000 was a
network of nature protection areas that was adopted in 1992 for the protection of the
most seriously threatened habitats in the European Union territory. Peatlands are on
the list of the habitats that are protected by this form of conservation (Natura 2000).
Special attention to peatlands is also espoused by various countries. For example,
the Swiss federal constitution expressly states the importance of peatland protection
(Tobolski 2012), while in Poland the statutory form of peatlands protection is
peatland reserve and they are also protected in the framework of national parks,
ecological grasslands or documentation sites (Nature protection).
The peatlands that are already disturbed or destroyed can be reestablished with
restoration processes. Due to the fact that water is the most important factor
determining of the existence of peatlands, rewetting is most often the solution for
restoration of perturbed objects (Tuittila et al. 2000; Zerbe et al. 2013). However,
increased water level does not ensure successful restoration since high ground
moisture of can be insufficient for the restoration of peatlands.
Regardless of doubts about its effectiveness, rewetting can be accomplished in
many practical ways, e.g. construction of small retention devices to stop the water
outflow with ditch drainage system (Glińska-Lewczuk et al. 2014; Bonn et al.
2016). Raising water levels to the soil surface or even above to maintain anaerobic
soil conditions results in environments that are good enough for rapid succession
towards closed peatland vegetation (Tuittila et al. 2000; Zerbe et al. 2013). Water
management gives promising results at many locations. Zerbe et al. (2013) found
that ten years after rewetting, manipulated peatlands in North East Germany formed
mosaic of vegetation types with the highest potential for peat formation. The
interesting case of positive impact of human activity that positively influences the
peatlands can be found in maritime areas of Canada. The stretches of dikes that
protect agricultural land, infrastructure, homes and communities additionally inhibit
salt marshes from naturally shifting with the level of the sea and reducing
destructive wave action (Erwin 2009).
178 K. M. Harenda et al.
8 Discussion and Summary
Peatlands are very important terrestrial ecosystems due to their uniqueness, vul-
nerability and importance in the global water and carbon cycles as well as climate
forming. The arising and development of these ecosystems was always determined
by complex of thermal and hydrological conditions and due to long-term influence
these factors peatlands are the second, after the ocean, stock of carbon in the world.
Peatlands interacted with atmosphere and cooling climate during the ice age by
storing greenhouse gases (GHG) related carbon. Some Holocene climate studies
suggest that peatlands are supposed to have cooled down the climate recently and
only anthropogenic emissions have prevented the initiation of the Ice Age
(Rudimann 2003).
Nowadays, the human activity and climate changes are expected to be the most
important factors determining the peatland’s carbon sequestration (Charman et al.
2013; Loisel et al. 2014). Additionally, the fires induced by both mentioned above
factors will become the serious threat for these ecosystems. This set of simulta-
neously acting factors affect both the hydrology, land use, temperature (direct and
indirect way) (Ferretti et al. 2005) and the intensification of extreme weather events
that also will have a destructive impact on every kind of ecosystem in the world.
There are accompanying effects that usually play role at local scale such as altered
hydrology, base flow shifts, decreased water resource, increased heat stress, soil
erosion, increased flood and risk of fires etc. (Erwin 2009). All the factors described
above affect the stability of peatlands carbon stocks and finally lead to bigger
emission of carbon and warming up the atmosphere. These changes in the func-
tioning of peatlands transform many of them from climate ‘coolers’(carbon net
sinks) to the ‘heaters’(carbon net sources) and it can be considered as very serious
threat due to their possible positive feedback with climate. Additionally, the CO
2
uptake ability of peatlands will not be able even to compensate the anthropogenic
GHG emissions (Mäkiläand Saarnisto 2008; Petrescu et al. 2015).
The study of carbon exchange between the peatlands and the atmosphere is
necessary also because of high uncertainty of the estimation of CO
2
concentration
rise as a result of climate warming. The recent projections of CO
2
increase as an
effect of 1 °C temperature increase ranges from 1.7 to 60 ppm CO
2
(Frank et al.
2010; Cox and Jones 2008) and many climate change models do not include
peatlands or coral reefs (CaCO
3
) in the estimation of the future CO
2
concentration
in the atmosphere.
Peatlands’function as landscape water buffer that through the quick absorption
of precipitation can reduce the effects of floods are sometime neglected in the
short-term economy. Values of these ecosystems can be described by the following
example. The Canadian peatlands help to save around 3 million at rural site and
even 50 million at urban site and it was also estimated that dehydration of peatlands
under Canadian conditions will increase the cost of floods damages by 29% and
38% in rural and urban areas, respectively (Canadian University of Waterloo
report). The forest succession in the context of peatlands was also found and it is an
The Role of Peatlands and Their Carbon Storage Function …179
element that mitigated the emission from the peatlands during the Holocene melting
period however recently this shift of plant cover can be limited by the wood
harvesting within the regular forest management. The forest surrounding the
peatland can be an effective barrier that prevents peatlands of fertile water impact
from the surrounding fertilized fields; therefore, the forests (especially dominated
by Pinus sylvestris) might affect peatlands’trophic state in long-term context
(Lamentowicz et al. 2007; Milecka et al. 2016).
There is no doubt that the global changes are unavoidable and because of that
fact the suitable management and protection strategy need to be implemented to
ensure the future peatlands sustainability. Since, mentioned before, the important
role of these ecosystems in the global carbon cycle the comprehensive under-
standing of the functioning of peatlands under climate change as well as human
impact that is critical for adequate protection’s strategy of peatlands. Additionally,
the protection of each object requires the basic knowledge about the local history,
ecology and specific character of the habitat which requires its precise analysis
(Erwin 2009; Page et al. 2011; Tobolski 2012). Moreover, the choice of protection
method is critical because of complex character of the influence of each imple-
mented change.
Activities that will allow the effective protection of peatlands should include
good protection policy of peatlands that roots from general approaches expressed in
global/continental scale conventions and ends up with locally related protection
goals and tasks. Additional efforts necessary for successful protection are to
increase the public knowledge related to protected objects. The education is fun-
damental to gain the success in peatland protection, especially on local scale. The
effectiveness of maintaining the peatlands as the carbon sinks is directly related to
the ecological awareness of the local communities. Another tool that will support
the introduction of reasonable protection management is the appropriate monitoring
program (Słowińska et al. 2010) that provides the information both long and
short-term changes of these vulnerable ecosystems. Such system provides insights
to the potential ecological consequences of the changes, supporting the decision
makers to determine the management practices that should be implemented. It helps
also the understanding the range of current variability in some parameters and
detecting desirable and undesirable changes in time within peatland areas and
adjacent ecosystems (Erwin 2009). These activities will allow to introduce adequate
solutions to mitigate the effects of climate change and reduce or eliminate the
human impact on these valuable ecosystems.
Recently, beside protection, people have tried also to restore disturbed or
completely destroyed areas of the peatlands in the world (e.g. Werf et al. 2010).
Appropriate techniques are selected on the basis of local conditions and they are
related to water since this factor determines the existence of peatlands (Erwin
2009). Such actions have been taken inter alia in Germany and Canada and in these
cases it was successful (Zerbe et al. 2013). However, one must be aware that
restoration might not always be effective because past disturbances were too
extensive.
180 K. M. Harenda et al.
Techniques that are often used concern rewetting and building the small reten-
tion devices in order to water retention in the peatlands or rising the water level.
This promotes the biological diversity and strongly moistened conditions cause also
the spreading of peatland vegetation that definitely has a positive effect on the
peatlands regeneration. A certain threat to the peatlands restoration may be a fact of
increased global water demand since it increased more than triple since 1950 and in
the future it is going to be doubled again by 2035 (Postel 1997). But, on the other
hand, peatlands as a store of water in the context of floods can offset the increasing
water demand. Summarizing this study, peatlands need to be protected and restored
as an element of sustainable development of global civilization since it is very
important in the context of mitigating the global warming effect.
Acknowledgements This work was supported by Swiss Contribution to the enlarged European
Union (No. PSPB-013/2010) and the National Science Centre, Poland (grant No. NN306060940
and 2015/17/B/ST10/01,656) and by the Polish-Norwegian Research Programme, project ID:
203258, contract No. Pol-Nor/203258/31/2013.
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