Carbon Exchange in Restored Peatlands
The demand for peat to be used in commercial bedding operations and in home gardening has increased in the past decades and a thriving industry - organized under the Canadian Sphagnum Peat Moss Association - has developed. As part of their operations, following peat extraction, producers are expected to take steps to restore the peatland to a its pre-extraction functioning. One way in which this is assessed is through a return of the system to a carbon sink. In partnership with Dr. Line Rochefort (Laval), Dr. Maria Strack (Waterloo) and Dr. Nigel Roulet (McGill), the AERlab has been assessing the carbon dynamics in two pairs of post-extraction restored peatlands. In each pair, one peatland has been restored using the moss-layer transfer technique while the other has not had any active vegetation restoration. We installed eddy covariance (EC) towers in each of the four peatlands and measured nearly continuously for the next 3-4 years. Our western pair is located near Seba Beach, Alberta. Measurements represent years 1-3 of restoration. Our eastern pair is located near Riviere du Loup, QC and measurements represent years 15-17 post-restoration.
Results:
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The first phase of this project will be completed in 2018 with the second phase beginning in 2019. Several graduate students have recently completed their theses:
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Publications and theses: |
Nugent, K.A., Strachan, I.B.*, Strack, M., Roulet, N.T., Rochefort, L., 2018. Multi-year net ecosystem carbon balance of a restored peatland reveals a return to C sink. Global Change Biol. 24(12): 5751-5768. doi:10.1111/gcb.14449
Rankin, T., Strachan, I.B.* and Strack, M., 2018. Carbon dioxide and methane exchange at a post-extraction, unrestored peatland. Ecological Engineering 122: 241-251. doi:10.1016/j.ecoleng.2018.06.021 Strack, M., Cagampan, J., Hassanpour Fard, G., Keith, A.M., Nugent, K.A., Rankin, T., Robinson, C., Strachan, I.B., Waddington, J.M., and Xu, B., 2016. Controls on plot-scale growing season CO2 and CH4 fluxes in restored peatlands: Do they differ from unrestored and natural sites? Mires and Peat 17(5): 1-18. DOI: 10.19189/MaP.2015.OMB.216 Scott MacDonald 2017 “Interannual variability and spatial heterogeneity in net carbon exchange at a restored peatland in Alberta” MSc Thesis, McGill University, 102 pp.
Sabrina Touchette 2017 (as co-supervisor w. M. Strack) “Hydrological controls on GHG exchange in a post-restoration peatland” MSc Thesis, University of Waterloo Tracy Rankin 2016 “An analysis of carbon dioxide and methane exchange at a post-extraction, unrestored peatland in Eastern Québec” MSc Thesis, McGill University, 84 pp. |