Arctic Peat’s Impact

As part of its 2018 awards, the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced it is supporting a study of the rapidly changing Arctic that will track the dynamics of peatlands as part of one of its 10 “Big Ideas” for scientists to tackle: Navigating the New Arctic.

Peat moss—Sphagnum—is known to be a “carbon sink,” which means it absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Carbon sinks, like peat moss, are increasingly being understood as a way to mitigate, or slow, the rapid warming of the planet, and studying the growth of it in the Arctic Tundra could help mitigate the impacts of climate change.

According to Zicheng Yu, professor of earth and environmental sciences, if shallow peatlands are widespread throughout the Arctic, the overall net carbon storage capacity of tundra might be underestimated globally.

Yu is principal investigator on the project, in collaboration with faculty from Texas A&M University, Bowdoin College, the University of New Hampshire and Purdue University, to study the expansion of peat in the Arctic Tundra, its patterns and development process, and the implications of such an expansion on the carbon cycle.

In recent years, scientists have observed that the Arctic is getting greener. But factors controlling the formation, distribution and dynamics of peat patches in the Arctic Tundra are poorly understood, according to Yu.

“We know that peatlands have been an important carbon sink over multi-millennial timescales,” Yu says. “However, we don’t know how they respond to recent and future environmental changes at decadal-centennial timescales, the most relevant timescales of rapid Arctic climate change and for climate change mitigation.

Furthermore, we don’t understand the possible cross-timescale interactions between plant production and peat decomposition processes.”

The goal is to answer the overarching question: Will the warming Arctic transform into a peat-rich landscape, as the boreal zone is now, or are there essential conditions lacking in a warming Arctic that will prevent this?

Yu and the research team will focus on two key elements of the Arctic peat-forming ecosystems: peat patches, and the role of Sphagnum in the formation, persistence and rapid rates of carbon sequestration of these potentially incipient peatlands. —Lori Friedman