Wetlands, including Peatlands
Challenges
Canada contains 24% of the world’s wetlands, including marshes and peatlands. In Canada, all wetlands together cover approximately 14% of the land surface with peatlands covering 12.3%, i.e., 1,113,270 km2 of Canada's 9,041,742 km2 land area. Wetlands contain 150 Giga tonnes of carbon, about 60% of Canada’s carbon stock, and almost all of this resides in peatlands. Globally, there are about 760 Gts C as CO2 in the atmosphere, 800 Gts as organic matter in vegetation, and 1650 Gts as organic matter in soils. - Peatlands represent a major store of the world’s land-based carbon. They cover an estimated 3 - 4% of the earth’s land surface and store 25% of the world’s terrestrial carbon, an amount roughly equivalent to ¾ of the total amount of global atmospheric C. The fate of peatlands on the globe can influence concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere.
- Peatlands are most concentrated in the northern hemisphere and are an asset and a responsibility largely of northern nations. North America has about 40% of the world's peatlands. The total area of peatland in North America is 1,735,000 km². They occur in every province of Canada and in nearly every state of the United States. The main peatland areas in Canada occur in Manitoba, Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan. Canada's peatlands are among the most extensive of the world’s peatlands and relatively the least threatened by development pressures.
- Permanently reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the energy, industrial, and transportation sectors in Canada and globally is the most direct way to reduce the risk of global climate change, reduce smog, improve air quality and human health, and address crucial ecological issues. Nevertheless, the maintenance and enhancement of wetlands are also crucial anthropogenic responses to climate change:
- pristine peatlands are on the average dynamic carbon sinks that continuously remove CO2 from the atmosphere
- restoring wetlands can increase the removal and storage of CO2 from the atmosphere
- on the other hand, peatlands and the forests which they may underlie are becoming drier and the incidence of forest fire is increasing. Fire in peatlands as a result of forest fire is a severe problem as fires may smolder underground, are extremely difficult to extinguish, are a hazard for people walking through smoldering areas, and are a persistent source of smoke that is a health and economic problem.
Accurately understanding the mass and distribution of the C in wetlands, and monitoring of wetlands for drying, or verifying that C is being stored for the purpose of carbon "credits" are hampered by the lack of analytical techniques for accurate analysis of C that are capable of analyzing both quantity and quality and are sufficiently cost-effective and practical to operate on a landscape basis.
PDK explores the feasibility of using NIRS as a rapid, cost-effective and field-based method for:
- monitoring terrestrial and wetland ecosystems for their responses as sinks or sources to global climate change and human activity
- estimating C inventories in wetlands to enable stewardship of their role as sinks.
Summary of studies using NIRS for the analysis of peat
In a limited number of studies, NIRS has been shown to be feasible for the determination of bulk density, degree of humification, moisture content, and contents of several Sphagnum species, aggregate monocotyledons, and Ericales roots (McTiernan et al. 1998). Peat for industrial and domestic use has been analyzed for moisture and bulk density (Downey and Bryne 1986). Gross heat, C, cellulose, H, N, and ash were successfully determined in freeze-dried peat from Irish bogs (Beining et al. 2001). Anaerobic methane generation by methanogenic bacteria in peat was predicted by NIRS. Up to 84 % of the variance in methane production rates were explained using the NIR spectra (Nilsson et al. 1993). Recently, NIRS has been extended to pH, organic content, cation concentrations, total N, C and P, extracellular enzyme activity in wetland soils from western Florida (Cohen et al. 2005).
References on the analysis of wetlands by NIRS
Beining, B.A., N.M. Holden, S.M. Ward, and E.P. Farrell. 2001. The prediction of some peat properties for Irish industrial bogs using near infrared spectroscopy (unpublished). http://www.bnm.ie/downloads/beining.pdf
Cohen, M.J., J.P. Prenger and W.F. DeBusk. 2005. Visible – near infrared reflectance spectroscopy for rapid, nondestructive assessment of wetland soil quality. J. Environ. Quality 34: 1422-1434.
Downey, G., and P. Bryne. 1986. Prediction of moisture and bulk density in milled peat by near infrared reflectance. J. Sci. Food Agric. 37: 231-238.
Malley, D.F., P.D. Martin, and E. Ben-Dor. 2004. Application in analysis of soils. Chapter 26, p. 729-784. In C.A. Roberts, J. Workman, Jr., and J.B. Reeves III (eds). Near-Infrared Spectroscopy in Agriculture. Agronomy 44. American Society of Agronomy, Inc., Crop Science Society of America, Inc., Soil Science Society of America, Inc. Publishers, Madison WI.
Malley, D.F., C. McClure, P.D. Martin, N. Firlotte, G. Goldsborough and M. Sheppard. 2002. Evaluation of near-infrared spectroscopy as a rapid method for estimating the carbon stored per unit area in a wetland. Final Report to the Manitoba Climate Change Action Fund on Project #15, December, 49 pp.
Malley, D.F., C. McClure, P.D. Martin, G. Goldsborough, and M. Sheppard. 2004. Carbon stored per unit area and moisture in a Canadian wetland determined by NIRS. p. 757-762. A.M.C. Davies and A. Garrido-Varo (eds). Near Infrared Spectroscopy: Proceedings of the 11th International Conference, NIR Publications, Chichester, West Sussex UK
McTiernan, K. B., M.H.Garnett, D. Maurquoy, P. Ineson, and M.-M. Couteaux. 1998. Use of near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) in palaeoecological studies of peat. The Holocene 8: 729-740.
Nilsson, M., T. Korsman, A. Nordgren, C. Palmborg, I. Renberg, and J. Ohman. 1993. NIR spectroscopy used in the microbiological and environmental sciences. p 229‑234. In K.I. Hildrum, T. Isaksson, T. Naes, and A. Tandberg (eds.) Near Infra‑red Spectroscopy: Bridging the Gap between Data Analysis and NIR Applications. Ellis Horwood, New York.
Project (September 2006 - December 2007)
Eastside Boreal Peatlands Carbon Monitoring
Funded by the Province of Manitoba Climate Change Action Fund as Project 05-010
Purpose of Project
This project is envisioned as the first component of a larger, multi-year project whose goal is the establishment of boreal forest/peatlands research sites in the pristine and largely unstudied East Side of Lake Winnipeg for the purposes of:
- applying traditional knowledge in assessing approach to climate change study
- obtaining data on carbon sequestration, including long-term carbon accumulation rate measurements for northern peatlands, and baseline data for climate change impacts monitoring
- exploring biodiversity, aboveground and belowground
- studying fire and other natural disturbances in the boreal zone
- applying innovative field technologies.
The project will collect cores from representative peatland habitats in the Poplar River Traditional Resource Area that will be analyzed for moisture and carbon content with NIRS.
Poplar River First Nation completed a lands management plan that documents the ecological integrity of the Poplar River Traditional Resource Area and recognizes that the territory is an excellent situation for natural science research on ecological issues such as climate change and biodiversity. The First Nation foresees and welcomes cooperative research and monitoring studies as part of land management plan implementation.
The overall project also has educational, capacity-building, technology transfer, and knowledge transfer goals whereby methods, practices, data, and information are shared among all partners, with particular emphasis on training for youth and students and the integration of traditional ecological knowledge and western scientific approaches.
Partners/Collaborators
Project Proponent and Manager:
Poplar River First Nation
Contact Person: Ray Rabliauskus, Lands Manager
Address: Band Office
Town/City: Poplar River, Manitoba
Postal Code: R0B 0Z0
Email: rayrab@poplarriverfirstnation.ca
http://www.poplarriverfirstnation.ca/
Dr. Jim McLaughlin, Forest Soil Research Scientist
Ontario Forest Research Institute
Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources
1235 Queen Street East
Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario P6A 2E5.
Email: jim.mclaughlin@ontario.ca
Project (April - December 2002)
Evaluation of near-infrared spectroscopy as a rapid method for estimating the carbon stored per unit area in a wetland.
Funded by the Province of Manitoba Climate Change Action Fund as Project 03-05-02 CCAF 15.
Purpose of Project
This project involved the collection of cores from three representative biological communities in Delta Marsh, MB, down to the substrate below the wetland. The amount of total carbon per unit area of wetland surface was estimated using NIRS.
Partners/Collaborators
Dr. Gordon Goldsborough,
Director, University Field Station (Delta Marsh), University of Manitoba
Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada R3T 2N2
Tel: 204-474-7469 Fax: 204-474-7650
E-mail: ggoldsb@cc.umanitoba.ca
Marsha I. Sheppard Ph.D., P. Geo.
ECOMatters Inc.
Suite 105, W.B. Lewis Business Centre
24 Aberdeen Ave., Pinawa, MB, Canada, R0E 1L0
Tel: 204-753-2747
E-mail: sheppardm@ecomatters.com
Report
Malley, D.F., C. McClure, P.D. Martin, N. Firlotte, G. Goldsborough and M. Sheppard. 2002. Evaluation of near-infrared spectroscopy as a rapid method for estimating the carbon stored per unit area in a wetland. Final Report to the Manitoba Climate Change Action Fund on Project #15, December, 49 pp. (Download pdf)
Executive Summary
The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate a rapid, cost-effective method using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) for estimating the quantity of total C per unit area (g cm-2) in a lacustrine wetland. Three representative sites in Delta Marsh, on the shore of Lake Manitoba, Manitoba were sampled, Crescent Pond, a small isolated, sheltered, clear-water pond; Eaglenest, a larger bay unconnected to Lake Manitoba; and Cadham Bay, a large, deeper, turbid-water bay connected to the lake. Duplicate cores were collected at each site for a total of 6 cores. Cores ranged in length from 52 to 75 cm long and, at least in Cadham Bay, are believed to contain most of the carbon accumulated in the 2500 y geological history of the marsh. The 1-cm thick sections of the cores, comprising the samples in the study, were scanned with two NIR instruments with differing optical systems, data collection time, wavelength range, and field-portability, the Foss NIRSystems Inc. model 6500 visible/NIR scanning spectrophotometer and the Zeiss Corona spectrometer. Samples were scanned field-moist ("as is") and dry. Principal component analysis of the spectral data indicated qualitative differences in the samples among sites that are postulated to be due to variation in the influences of terrestriality vs limnology on the sites.
Calibrations were developed for moisture between the spectral data and gravimetric moisture determined in the samples and for C in the dried and field-moist samples. The NIR-predicted values for moisture agreed 93 and 94% with moisture determined by oven drying the samples for the 6500 and Corona instruments, respectively. These calibrations were judged using statistical criteria to be "excellent". The NIR-predicted values for C in the dried samples agreed 95 and 90% with the C values obtained by combustion for the 6500 and Corona instruments, respectively. For field-moist samples, the NIR-predicted values for C agreed 86 and 87% with the C contents calculated on a wet weight basis from the combustion reference data for the 6500 and Corona, respectively. These calibrations are judged to be "successful" to "excellent".
The total C contained in the six cores determined using the 6500 was 2.51, 2.79, 2.99, 2.49, 3.24, and 2.87 g cm-2. Variability in core length affected the total C. Total C calculated for slices 2 to 51 cm, common to all cores, was 2.42, 2.43, and 2.06 g cm-2 for Crescent Pond, Eaglenest and Cadham Bay, respectively. Crescent Pond and Eaglenest were highly similar in C profiles; Cadham Bay contained lower C content above 50 cm. The results for C per unit area for each core were very similar between the 6500 and Corona NIR instruments. The coefficient of variability (deviation as a % of the mean) for total C between the two instruments for the six cores varied from 0.05 to 2.74 %.
Near-infrared spectroscopy is a feasible method for the determination of C inventories in wetlands when combined with effective sampling of the full depth of the organic C layer, appropriate sampling of spatial variability in the depth of the organic layer within representative habitats of the wetland, and measurement of areal extent of the representative habitats. It is expected from the literature that the technique can be utilized in peatlands as well as in lacustrine wetlands. Field-portability such as available in the Zeiss Corona can further reduce cost, time and effort, and increase efficiency.