Maintaining a water level between 20 and 30 centimeters below the local water table will boost southern peatlands’ carbon storage and reduce the amount of climate-warming carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane they release back into the atmosphere during dry periods by up to 90%, a new Duke University study finds.
Maintaining a water level between 20 and 30 centimeters below the local water table will boost southern peatlands’ carbon storage and reduce the amount of climate-warming carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane they release back into the atmosphere during dry periods by up to 90%, a new Duke University study finds.
“We could immediately reduce U.S. carbon losses by 2% to 3% of our total national goal by applying this guideline on about 100,000 acres of restored or partially restored peatlands currently found across coastal regions of North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and Georgia,” said Curtis J. Richardson, founding director of the Duke Wetland and Coasts Center, who led the research.
Greater reductions would be possible as more former peatlands are rewetted and restored using the new guideline, said Richardson, who also holds an appointment as research professor of resource ecology at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment.
The southeastern U.S. coastal plain was originally home to more than 2.4 million acres of evergreen shrub bogs, locally known as pocosin peatlands, he said, but more than 70% of them have been drained for agriculture and forestry over the years.
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Image: More than 70% of 2.4 million acres of evergreen shrub bogs, locally known as pocosin peatlands, were drained for agriculture and forestry along the Southeastern U.S. Coast in the last century and a half. Much of that land now lies fallow and could become an enormous carbon sink if moisture were restored. (Credit: Duke University Wetland and Coasts Center)
