Prompt rewetting of drained peatlands reduces climate warming despite methane emissions

Anke Günther (), Alexandra Barthelmes, Vytas Huth, Hans Joosten, Gerald Jurasinski, Franziska Koebsch and John Couwenberg
Additional contact information
Anke Günther: University of Rostock, Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Studies, Landscape Ecology
Alexandra Barthelmes: University of Greifswald, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Peatland Studies and Paleoecology
Vytas Huth: University of Rostock, Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Studies, Landscape Ecology
Hans Joosten: University of Greifswald, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Peatland Studies and Paleoecology
Gerald Jurasinski: University of Rostock, Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Studies, Landscape Ecology
Franziska Koebsch: University of Rostock, Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Studies, Landscape Ecology
John Couwenberg: University of Greifswald, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Peatland Studies and Paleoecology

Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-5

Abstract: Abstract Peatlands are strategic areas for climate change mitigation because of their matchless carbon stocks. Drained peatlands release this carbon to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide (CO2). Peatland rewetting effectively stops these CO2 emissions, but also re-establishes the emission of methane (CH4). Essentially, management must choose between CO2 emissions from drained, or CH4 emissions from rewetted, peatland. This choice must consider radiative effects and atmospheric lifetimes of both gases, with CO2 being a weak but persistent, and CH4 a strong but short-lived, greenhouse gas. The resulting climatic effects are, thus, strongly time-dependent. We used a radiative forcing model to compare forcing dynamics of global scenarios for future peatland management using areal data from the Global Peatland Database. Our results show that CH4 radiative forcing does not undermine the climate change mitigation potential of peatland rewetting. Instead, postponing rewetting increases the long-term warming effect through continued CO2 emissions.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15499-z Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-15499-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-15499-z

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().