peatlands

Restored wetlands and climate

September 23, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Forests are well-known to be major storehouses of carbon in the environment. Less known but also extremely important are peatlands and wetlands and, like forests, both have suffered declines as a result of human activity. And, like forests, both are seeing efforts at restoration.

Restoring peatlands has the drawback that it initially causes a spike in methane emissions, and it therefore takes a long time for them to have a net positive effect on the climate after they are restored.

In a new study by RMIT University in Australia, it was found that reviving floodplain wetlands reduces carbon emissions by 39% and restores critical ecosystem functions in one year without any increase in methane emissions. The 6-year study reintroduced water flow to a degraded freshwater wetland. Over the course of the study, carbon stocks in the wetland increased by 53%. Freshwater wetlands cover less than 10% of the Earth’s surface but contribute up to 25% of global methane emissions. Despite this, they still play a crucial role in global ecosystem function.

Floodplain or riparian wetlands comprise over half of global wetlands. They store less carbon than peatlands but restoring them gains substantial ecosystem benefits quickly. The carbon is stored in plant roots and soil. Wetlands are nature’s purification system removing both nitrogen from waterways and carbon from the atmosphere.

Restoring and managing freshwater wetlands for the purpose of carbon sequestration also boosts flood and drought resilience. Riparian wetlands are connected to other ecosystems like rivers and streams and provide benefits to them.

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Restored wetlands reap benefits for climate, drought-resilience after just one year: study

Photo, posted January 7, 2014, courtesy of Tom Barnes / USFWS via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Restoring oil well sites with moss

June 16, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Researchers at the University of Waterloo in Canada have developed a method for restoring peatlands at tens of thousands of oil and gas exploration sites in Western Canada.

A well pad is a prepared area used for drilling oil or gas wells, encompassing the site where drilling equipment, wellheads, and related facilities are located. Preparing well pads involves burying native peatland vegetation under clay or sand, thereby eliminating the ability of the peatland to sequester carbon as well reducing available habitat for wildlife.

Restoring well sites has typically involved planting trees or grasses to eventually establish forests or grasslands. The Waterloo method returns a well pad to its condition before drilling occurred and is part of ongoing efforts to restore peatlands, which are known to be even more effective for sequestering carbon than tropical forests.

The Waterloo technique involves lowering the surface of a decommissioned well site and transplanting native mosses onto it to effectively recreate a peatland. They tested the technique to scale at an entire well pad and found that it results in sufficient water for the growth of peatland moss across large portions of the study site.

The results suggest that re-establishment of peatland vegetation on lowered well pads is possible. The researchers plan to continue monitoring the ecosystem in the study’s well pads to confirm that the transplanted mosses will be self-sustaining over the coming decades. They will focus on increasing the amount of water that flows from surrounding natural peatlands into the converted well pads to further optimize soil moisture.

This work could represent an important milestone in ecological restoration.

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Restoring oil wells back to nature with moss

Photo, posted November 6, 2014, courtesy of Chris Boyer / Kestrel Aerial Services via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Nature: An important climate ally

June 10, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Nature is often seen as a victim of climate change, but it’s also one of the most powerful tools we have to fight it. Natural ecosystems, such as forests, wetlands, grasslands, oceans, and soils, absorb and store massive amounts of carbon dioxide. These ecosystems not only help reduce the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but they also regulate temperatures and provide buffers against extreme weather.

One of the most effective strategies for mitigating climate change is simply protecting and restoring these natural areas. For example, mangrove forests – those coastal wetlands filled with tangled, salt-tolerant trees – sequester carbon at high rates and help protect coastal communities from storm surges and rising seas. Peatlands – another type of wetland – store more carbon than all the world’s forests combined – despite only covering 3% of Earth’s land surface. Global restoration efforts are underway, from replanting mangroves in Southeast Asia to rewetting degraded peatlands in Europe.

Creating urban green spaces like parks and community gardens, restoring forests through native tree plantings, and adopting sustainable agricultural practices like cover cropping and agroforestry are all proven to be low-cost, high-impact climate solutions.

While nature-based solutions are gaining recognition, they remain critically underfunded, according to a recent United Nations report. Closing this gap is essential to unlocking nature’s full climate potential.

Investing in nature isn’t just about preserving Earth’s natural beauty. It’s a practical strategy for building a more resilient and sustainable future.

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Mangrove forests and rising seas

Financing Nature-based Solutions for a better future

Finding peatlands

The Importance Of Urban Green Spaces

Photo, posted October 23, 2011, courtesy of the Everglades National Park / NPS via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

The UN Carbon Market

January 13, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The UN climate conference in November approved an official market for large-scale trading of carbon credits. This will allow industrial countries to help meet their emission reduction targets set by the Paris Climate Agreement by paying other nations to protect and restore forests and carbon-rich peatlands.

The first major participant in this multi-billion-dollar enterprise is Indonesia. That country is home to the world’s third largest expanse of tropical rainforests and more than a third of the world’s carbon-storing peatlands. Indonesia’s government plans to raise up to $65 billion by 2028 by selling carbon credits accrued by restoring and protecting its forests and peatlands.

The problem with carbon trading is that it can be filled with loopholes ranging from inaccurate carbon accounting to outright fraud. Carbon trading with both individual companies and other countries can result in double- and even triple-counting of the same carbon.

For example, carbon credits are assigned when forests earmarked for agricultural or other development are preserved instead of being felled. But what if that forest destruction wasn’t going to happen even without selling carbon credits?

There are organizations in the business of verifying carbon accounting, but independent analysis of their methodologies has revealed serious shortcomings, and in many cases, the verifications have been deemed to be worthless.

There are real problems with carbon accounting and setting correct baselines for the carbon emission reductions associated with carbon credits. Nevertheless, the existence of a global carbon market can be an important tool in the world’s efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change.

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Will UN Carbon Market Work? Indonesia Will Provide First Test

Photo, posted June 12, 2017, courtesy of Runa S. Lindebjerg via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Carbon In The Congo Peatlands | Earth Wise

December 16, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The Congo peatlands in central Africa are the world’s largest tropical peatlands complex, occupying an area of 65,000 square miles, about the size of the entire state of Florida. Peatlands represent a huge store of carbon and therefore are important to the stability of the climate.

A study by scientists at the University of Leeds and University College London found that around the time that Stonehenge was built – about 5,000 years ago – there was an extended drying period in central Congo and the peatlands started emitting carbon dioxide rather than storing it. Over the course of time, the climate in the area got wetter again and over the past 2,000 years, the Congo peatlands have been a place that takes large amounts of carbon out of the atmosphere.

The study utilized peat samples taken from beneath remote swamp forests to build a record of the vegetation and rainfall in the central Congo Basin over the past 17,500 years.

In a paper published in Nature, the researchers warn that if modern-day global warming produces extended droughts in the Congo region, history could repeat itself and the peatlands could once again become carbon emitters. If that were to happen, over 30 billion tons of carbon could be released into the atmosphere. That is the equivalent to the total global emissions from fossil fuel burning over a three-year period.

There is some evidence that dry seasons are lengthening in the Congo Basin, but it is unknown if these will continue. In any case, the study reveals that peatlands are more vulnerable than previously thought and need to be protected. They are some of the most wildlife and carbon-rich ecosystems on Earth.

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Congo peatlands could release billions of tonnes of carbon

Photo, posted November 5, 2016, courtesy of Roni Ziade / Forest Service via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Greenhouse Gas Removal And Net Zero | Earth Wise

November 18, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Reducing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions can slow the progress of global warming but only reaching and sustaining net zero global emissions can halt the progress of climate change.

The move to renewable power and the use of electric transport are substantial and essential ways to reduce emissions. But even if these transitions take place on a rapid timescale, they will not eliminate all emissions. Many industrial activities and, especially, agriculture will continue to contribute substantial greenhouse gas emissions. There are efforts to reduce the contributions of these things, but there are no zero-emission substitutes for most of them.

As a result, actually removing CO2 from the atmosphere once it is there is essential to achieve net zero emissions. If greenhouse gas removal can be scaled up sufficiently, it opens the option of going “net negative”, which would be the ideal way to mitigate and, better still, reverse the effects of climate change.

There are multiple approaches to carbon dioxide removal. Some are natural, involving ways of capturing and storing carbon in trees, biochar, and peatlands. Others are technological. An example is the system that has just gone into operation in Iceland that uses fans, chemicals, and heat to capture CO2 and then mineralize it in volcanic rock. Another is a system being tested in the UK that captures CO2 from growing biomass and pipes it to storage under the North Sea.

Much of the attention on carbon capture technology is aimed at trapping the emissions from fossil fuel power plants, but the need to remove carbon dioxide that has entered the atmosphere in other ways is ultimately far greater.

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CO2 removal is essential to achieving net zero

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

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Peatlands And Greenhouse Gas Emissions | Earth Wise

July 21, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

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.

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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.

Wildfires And Carbon

September 17, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

This summer has been an unprecedented year for fires in the Arctic. Major fires have burned throughout the Arctic in Russia, Canada, and Greenland. In total these fires released 50 million tons of carbon dioxide in June alone, which is as much as Sweden emits in an entire year.

In an average year, wildfires around the world burn an area equivalent to the size of India and emit more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than global road, rail, shipping and air transport combined.

Ordinarily, this is part of a natural cycle. As vegetation in burned areas regrows, it draws CO2 back out of the atmosphere through photosynthesis. This is part of the fire-recovery cycle, which can take less than a year in grasslands, but decades in forests. But in Arctic or tropical peatlands, full recovery may not occur for centuries.

A recent study looked at and quantified the important role that charcoal plays in helping to compensate for carbon emissions from fires. In wildfires, some of the vegetation is not consumed by burning, but instead is transformed to charcoal – referred to as pyrogenic carbon. This carbon-rich material can be stored in soils and oceans over very long time periods.

Researchers have combined field studies, satellite data, and modelling to quantify the amount of carbon that is placed in storage in the form of charcoal. Their results are that the production of pyrogenic carbon amounts to about 12% of the CO2 emissions from fires and can be considered a significant buffer for landscape fire emissions.

Charcoal does not represent a solution to the problem of increasingly intense wildfires, but it is important to take it into account in understanding what is happening.

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How wildfires trap carbon for centuries to millennia

Photo, posted August 17, 2018, courtesy of the Bureau of Land Management Oregon and Washington via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Indonesian Deforestation Continues

May 3, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Worldwide, deforestation and land disturbance are responsible for about a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions. The largest contributor to this problem is Indonesia and getting control of its emissions is a crucial part of meeting global carbon reduction targets.

Natural Climate Solutions

February 13, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The Paris Climate Agreement embodies a commitment to hold the increase in the global average temperature to less than 2 Celsius degrees above preindustrial levels. Most strategies to achieve this goal involve reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from human activities such as burning fossil fuels as well as various land use activities. But there are also so-called Natural Climate Solutions, which relate to the storage of carbon and reduction in carbon emissions across global forests, wetlands, grasslands, and agricultural lands.