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- Title
Quantification of Peat Thickness and Stored Carbon at the Landscape Scale in Tropical Peatlands: A Comparison of Airborne Geophysics and an Empirical Topographic Method.
- Authors
Silvestri, Sonia; Knight, Rosemary; Viezzoli, Andrea; Richardson, Curtis J.; Anshari, Gusti Z.; Dewar, Noah; Flanagan, Neal; Comas, Xavier
- Abstract
Peatlands play a key role in the global carbon cycle, sequestering and releasing large amounts of carbon. Despite their importance, a reliable method for the quantification of peatland thickness and volume is still missing, particularly for peat deposits located in the tropics given their limited accessibility, and for scales of measurement representative of peatland environments (i.e., of hundreds of km2). This limitation also prevents the accurate quantification of the stored carbon as well as future greenhouse gas emissions due to ongoing peat degradation. Here we present the results obtained using the airborne electromagnetic (AEM) method, a geophysical surveying tool, for peat thickness detection at the landscape scale. Based on a large amount of data collected on an Indonesian peatland, our results show that the AEM method provides a reliable and accurate 3‐D model of peatlands, allowing the quantification of their volume and carbon storage. A comparison with the often used empirical topographic approach, which is based on an assumed correlation between peat thickness and surface topography, revealed larger errors across the landscape associated with the empirical approach than the AEM method when predicting the peat thickness. As a result, the AEM method provides higher estimates (22%) of organic carbon pools than the empirical method. We show how in our case study the empirical method tends to underestimate the peat thickness due to its inability to accurately detect the large variability in the elevation of the peat/mineral substrate interface, which is better quantified by the AEM method. Plain Language Summary: Peatlands store in their soils about the same amount of carbon present in the vegetation biomass. Peat degradation due to human interventions (as for example soil drainage) and fires that occur during severe droughts release several gigatons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) every year. The accurate assessment of the carbon stored in peatlands is of key importance to implement effective strategies to mitigate climate change, promoting conservation actions, and avoiding potential GHG emissions. In this research, we compare two methods that allow us to construct a 3‐D model of peatlands. Applying the methods to a large study site in Indonesia, we show how a geophysical method called airborne electromagnetics allows for a more accurate quantification of the peat volume and the organic carbon pool. Key Points: The airborne electromagnetic (AEM) method can detect both the top and the bottom of a peatland over large areas at high spatial resolutionA correlation between the peat thickness and surface topography is common in some dome‐shaped peatlands around the worldThe peatland 3‐D model retrieved with AEM is superior if compared to the empirical approach that links peat thickness to only soil elevation
- Subjects
PEATLAND management; GEOPHYSICS research; CARBON sequestration; ELECTROMAGNETISM; TOPOGRAPHY
- Publication
Journal of Geophysical Research. Earth Surface, 2019, Vol 124, Issue 12, p3107
- ISSN
2169-9003
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1029/2019JF005273