Current Assessment of the Wetland Carbon Pool in Different Constituent Entities of the Russian Federation

Abstract

A current more detailed assessment of the bog and wetland areas in the Russian Federation (RF) and the carbon stock in their peat layers has been conducted. Compared to the previous assessment (Vompersky et al., 1994), the creation of the geoinformation system (GIS) “Bogs of Russia” at the Institute of Forestry Science of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Vompersky et al. 2005), allowed to include, in addition to the cartographic basis, replenishable layers of thematic content and to determine the areas of peatlands and carbon stock in their peat layers not only for the whole country, but also for separate constituent entities of the Russian Federation country as a whole, but also for the constituent entities of the Russian Federation. It is important for the administration of each constituent territory to be aware of the peat reserve volumes in order for sustainable nature management to be maintained. It is shown that the area of bogs and marshlands amounted to 328 million hectares, peat stock — to 216.3 billion tons (abs. dry mass). The stock of carbon associated with the peat was 108.7 billion tons. Compared to previous estimates, the area decreased by 11% and carbon stock by 4%. The Annex to the article contains the data on the bogs and wetlands areas, overall carbon stock in their peat layers and specific carbon stocks per unit area of bogs and wetlands for different constituent entities of the Russian Federation. The carbon stocks estimates were also obtained separately for the main groups of bog and wetland habitat types.