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.

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Results:

This project continues through 2018 and several graduate student theses are either recently completed or remain ongoing.
Tracy Rankin completed MSc research on the unrestored 15yr old peatland site. Her results indicate that the resulting site is dry with a water table well below the surface. Only sparse Eriophorum spp, have been successful in colonizing the fields. The ecosystem therefore remains a source of CO2 to the atmosphere but despite the presence of the Eriophorum, ecosystem methane flux is small. The exceptions are the ditches which have been invaded by Typha and Phragmites spp.; both take up CO2 through rapid growth but are conduits for methane. However, the ditches are a small fraction of the total area and therefore the net result is that the site remains a source of C after 15 years.
Kelly Nugent's doctoral research indicates that the restored site, after 15 years, is a net carbon sink well within the range of values found at undisturbed bog peatlands (e.g. Mer Bleue). While this is good news, she continues to research the linear methane hotspots that the remnant ditches represent and is examining the processes controlling the methane fluxes in these areas such that the net C budget can be better constrained.
Scott MacDonald is completing MSc research at the western peatland. His results show that the restored site remains a source of carbon for the first three years but that the source of CO2 is decreasing as vegetation increases. In 2015, Scott installed a second EC tower at a wetter area of the restored site and is using the two datasets to complete a detailed study of the role that the small topographic gradient has on site hydrology and the resulting vegetation and carbon uptake.
Sabrina Touchette's MSc research (supervised by Maria Strack) focuses on the C exchange from species in the wetter areas of the restored site and the controls on their growth and functioning.

Publications and theses:

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