Boreal Climate change Peatlands

The essential carbon service provided by northern peatlands

Harris, L.I., Richardson, K., Bona, K.A., Davidson, S., Finkelstein, S., Garneau, M., McLaughlin, J., Nwaishi, F., Olefeldt, D., Packalen, M., Roulet, N., Southee, M.F., Strack, M., Webster, K.L., Wilkinson, S.L, and Ray, J.C.

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Key points

• The world’s largest peatland carbon (C) stock is located in Canada; these vast and mostly intact peatlands include the world’s second largest peatland complex, the Hudson Bay Lowlands, an area of pronounced interest to the mineral extraction industry
• Land conversion and other disturbances to peatlands across Canada lead to large losses of mostly irrecoverable C
• Proactive protection of northern peatlands must be a critical component of nature-based solutions for climate change; policy initiatives that apply the principle of avoidance rather than mitigation are required, with Indigenous stewardship an essential mechanism for the protection of peatlands across Canada
• Improved quantification and reporting on peatland C stocks and greenhouse-gas emissions and removals to fill knowledge gaps are a necessary prerequisite to informed land-use planning that could accelerate policy action

Abstract

Northern peatlands have cooled the global climate by accumulating large quantities of soil carbon (C) over thousands of years. Maintaining the C sink function of these peatlands and their immense long-term soil C stores is critical for achieving net-zero global carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions by 2050 to mitigate climate warming. One-quarter of the world’s northern peatlands are in Canada, with these mostly intact ecosystems providing a global C service that is increasingly recognized as a critical part of nature-based solutions to combat climate change. However, land-use change and other disturbances threaten these globally important stores of “irrecoverable C” (that is, soil C lost to disturbance that will take centuries to recover). Inadequate policy safeguards to avoid conversion and degradation, and the limited quantification and reporting of peatland greenhouse-gas emissions and removals, increase the vulnerability of these peatlands. Targeted policies from local to global scales will be needed for improved decision making and incentivizing long-term C management of northern peatlands.

Recommended citation

Harris, L.I., Richardson, K., Bona, K.A., Davidson, S., Finkelstein, S., Garneau, M., McLaughlin, J., Nwaishi, F., Olefeldt, D., Packalen, M., Roulet, N., Southee, M.F., Strack, M., Webster, K.L., Wilkinson, S.L, and Ray, J.C. (2021). The essential carbon service provided by northern peatlands. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. https://doi.org/10.1002/fee.2437