• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Earth Wise

A look at our changing environment.

  • Home
  • About Earth Wise
  • Where to Listen
  • All Articles
  • Show Search
Hide Search
You are here: Home / Episode / Peatlands And Greenhouse Gas Emissions | Earth Wise

Peatlands And Greenhouse Gas Emissions | Earth Wise

July 21, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Peatlands play a significant role in greenhouse gas emissions

As the world seeks to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that have been warming the climate, most of the focus has been on the primary contributors to the problem, such as the burning of fossil fuels.  But there are many smaller contributors to greenhouse gas emissions that individually play only a minor role but collectively add up to significant amounts.  One of these is the emissions from peatlands.

Peatlands are a type of wetland that occur in almost every country on Earth, covering 3% of the global land surface.  They are terrestrial ecosystems in which waterlogged conditions prevent plant material from fully decomposing.  As a result, the production of organic matter exceeds its decomposition, which results in a net accumulation of peat.  Peatlands are, in fact, the largest natural terrestrial carbon store, storing more over 700 billion tons of carbon, more than all other types of vegetation combined.

Human activity, such as creating drainage in peatlands for agriculture and forest plantation, results in the release of over 1.6 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year. This constitutes 3% of all global greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activities.

Large numbers of people rely on peatlands for their livelihoods, so it is not reasonable for these emission-generating activities to be greatly curtailed.  But researchers at the University of Leicester in the UK analyzed the potential effects of cutting the current drainage depths in croplands and grasslands on peat in half and showed that this could reduce CO2 emissions by more than 500 million tons a year. This equates to one percent of all greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activities.

There are numerous opportunities to reduce emissions a little bit at a time.

**********

Web Links

Better peatland management could cut half a billion tonnes of carbon

Photo, posted August 17, 2013, courtesy of Joshua Mayer via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Tagged With: accumulation, agriculture, carbon, carbon store, Climate Change, climate warming, CO2, decomposing, earth, emissions, environment, forest plantations, fossil fuels, gas, greenhouse, greenhouse gas emissions, human activities, human activity, land surface, opportunities, organic matter, peatlands, plants, vegetation, wetland

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Recent Episodes

  •  Restoring Biocrusts | Earth Wise
  • Abandoned Oil Wells In The Gulf Of Mexico | Earth Wise
  • Carbon-Negative Concrete | Earth Wise
  • Shrinking Birds | Earth Wise
  • A New Deep-Sea Reef In The Galapagos | Earth Wise

WAMC Northeast Public Radio

WAMC/Northeast Public Radio is a regional public radio network serving parts of seven northeastern states (more...)

Copyright © 2023 ·