Half a billion tonnes of carbon emissions could be cut from Earth’s atmosphere by improved management of peatlands, according to research partly undertaken at the University of Leicester.
Half a billion tonnes of carbon emissions could be cut from Earth’s atmosphere by improved management of peatlands, according to research partly undertaken at the University of Leicester.
A team of scientists, led by the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (UKCEH), estimated the potential reduction of around 500 million tonnes in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by restoring all global agricultural peatlands.
Peatlands – a type of wetland, where dead vegetation is stopped from fully breaking down – cover just 3% of the global land surface, but store around 650 billion tonnes of carbon, around 100 billion tonnes more than all of the world’s vegetation combined.
Dr Jörg Kaduk and Professor Sue Page, both from the University of Leicester’s School of Geography, Geology and the Environment, are co-authors of the study published in Nature.
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