Abstract
Abstract. Yamulki and co-authors address in their recent publication the important issue of net emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) from peatlands where land use conversion has taken place. In their case, they studied conversion to forestry versus peatland restoration after a first rotation of plantation forestry. They monitored soil-derived fluxes of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) using opaque chamber measurements on planted and unplanted control treatments (with or without drainage), and an unplanted plot within a restored (felled) block on former lowland raised bog. They propose that their measurements of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at these sites suggest that the total net GHG emissions, in 100 yr carbon dioxide equivalents, of the restored peat bog would be higher than that of the peat bog with trees. We believe there are a number of issues with the measurement, calculation and comparison of these greenhouse budgets that may invalidate this conclusion.
Highlights
DiscussionThe study of Yamulki et al (2013) presents valuable measurements of greenhouse gas emissions from two sites located on a former lowland raised bog in Scotland, UK
A sizeable proportion of the UK raised and blanket bogs were afforested in the 1970s and 1980s and the discussion of how to manage these forests or whether to restore such sites to peatland habitat brings with it potential implications for national accounting of greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions from the land use sector
The second issue we identify relates to the calculation of both the “net ecosystem CO2 exchange” and the overall “net GHG flux” (Table 4) for their study sites
Summary
The study of Yamulki et al (2013) presents valuable measurements of greenhouse gas emissions from two sites located on a former lowland raised bog in Scotland, UK. E. Artz et al.: Soil CO2, CH4 and N2O fluxes from an afforested lowland raised peat bog in Scotland effectively to future literature-based meta-analyses of the effects of different land use on GHG emissions from peatlands. Net ecosystem exchange (NEE), a term used by atmospheric scientists and generally defined as the instantaneous net flux of CO2 to the atmosphere (i.e. always opposite in sign to NEP, and negative if net CO2 sequestering), can be relatively approximated with measurements obtained via eddy covariance or chamber-based techniques This relative ease to measure one of the major fluxes in the NECB has led to many reports where authors have taken NEE to equal (−)NEP (i.e. essentially assuming the gaseous ecosystem carbon losses to include only CO2). As the difference between a functional peatland and a non-functional one is determined by only a very small imbalance between inputs and outputs, as the long-term accumulation rates of near-natural peatlands within the last millennium are of the order of ca. 10–37 g C m−2 yr−1 (Yu et al, 2012; Charman et al, 2013), it is important that none of the major fluxes are omitted
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