How does land management influence FIre REsilience and carbon fate in BLANKET bogs? (FIRE BLANKET)

土地管理如何影响 BLANKET 沼泽的防火能力和碳命运？

• 批准号: NE/T00651X/1
• 负责人: Amy Pickard
• 金额: $ 0.75万
• 依托单位: NERC CEH (Up to 30.11.2019)
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2019 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FT00651X%2F1
• 关键词: How; does; land; management; influence

In good condition, peatlands are the most efficient soil carbon store, regulate freshwater and climate, and maintain biodiversity. However, management interventions can jeopardise the delivery of all these services by destabilising the vast C store that peat has locked away over thousands of years. In the UK, up to 80% of UK peatlands are damaged and release carbon back to the atmosphere as greenhouse gases like CO2 and methane, which amplify climate change in the same way that fossil fuels do. Furthermore, destabilisation of the peat carbon store can alter the flow and the quality of water within the peatlands and into streams, rivers and all the way to the sea. This can affect drinking water supplies as well as freshwater and marine habitats and wildlife. Importantly, disturbed peatlands may also become more vulnerable to stress, including severe drought and wildfires - events which are predicted to increase with future climate change.Understanding how land-use interacts with climate extremes in peatlands is essential to inform which management practices are likely to best maintain and enhance peatland carbon storage. However, this is notoriously challenging to achieve. Indeed, climate extremes are rare and ephemeral by nature, and therefore can only be opportunistically studied. In addition, their effects can only be truly assessed where high-quality ground-based observations pre-date a given extreme event, and where data from both impacted and similar control areas can be compared afterwards. These conditions rarely come together, but when they do, they provide unique opportunities. Following a dry and warm spring, in mid-May 2019, a large wildfire burnt approximately >60 km2 within the Flow Country peatlands of Caithness and Sutherland, North Scotland. Covering 4000km2, the Flow Country is a site of global significance currently under consideration for UNESCO World Heritage Site status. Nevertheless, it has also been substantially modified in places by drainage and notably forestry (with non-native conifer trees), making those areas particularly vulnerable to catastrophic deep burning. Unlike other wildfires in the UK, the May 2019 Flow Country fire covers an exceptionally large area that includes peatlands in a range of conditions: drained, drained and afforested, under restoration (through forestry removal and drain blocking) and near-natural. These areas are also actively used for scientific research, with a wide range of prior data and a mature collaborative network of researchers and land managers currently in place. The May Flow Country fire has therefore created an unprecedented and urgent opportunity to quantify the interacting effects of fire, drought and past human interventions on peatland carbon storage and water quality.We want to seize this opportunity. First, we want to compare burn severity, carbon losses during the fire, and initial recovery across the different peatland management types. To do that, we will combine ground measurements, UAV images and a newly validated method that uses satellite radar data to measure peat surface motion. This method works because the peat surface motion is a direct response to water storage in the peat, and the type of plants on the peat surface. These in turn are the main indicators of peat condition. By comparing data in the periods prior to and after the wildfire, we can examine the ability of peatland to recover from such an event. Secondly, we will measure aqueous and gaseous carbon emissions across a range of burnt and unburnt land-uses and we will quantify changes in the quantity and quality of dissolved organic matter, in order to understand how changes attributed to the fire alter the fate of peatland C. Finally, we will use our new knowledge and consult with land managers to compare how different management strategies of forestry and forest-to-bog restoration influence fire risk and damage in order to make recommendations for management and policy.

在良好的条件下，泥炭地是最有效的土壤碳储存，调节淡水和气候，并保持生物多样性。然而，管理干预可能会破坏泥炭数千年来锁定的巨大C存储的稳定性，从而危及所有这些服务的提供。在英国，多达80%的英国泥炭地遭到破坏，并将碳作为二氧化碳和甲烷等温室气体释放回大气层，这些气体与化石燃料一样加剧了气候变化。此外，泥炭碳储存的不稳定会改变泥炭地内的水的流动和质量，并进入溪流，河流和所有通往海洋的道路。这可能影响饮用水供应以及淡水和海洋生境和野生动物。重要的是，受干扰的泥炭地也可能更容易受到压力的影响，包括严重的干旱和野火--预计这些事件将随着未来气候变化而增加。了解泥炭地的土地利用如何与极端气候相互作用，对于告知哪些管理措施可能最好地维持和增强泥炭地的碳储存至关重要。然而，这是众所周知的具有挑战性的实现。事实上，极端气候现象在本质上是罕见和短暂的，因此只能偶然地进行研究。此外，只有在特定极端事件发生之前就有高质量的地面观测数据，而且受影响地区和类似控制地区的数据可以在事后进行比较的情况下，才能真正评估其影响。这些条件很少同时出现，但一旦出现，它们就提供了独特的机会。在经历了一个干燥温暖的春天之后，2019年5月中旬，苏格兰北部凯斯内斯和萨瑟兰的流动国家泥炭地发生了一场大火，烧毁了大约60平方公里。面积达4000平方公里，是一个具有全球意义的地方，目前正在考虑联合国教科文组织世界遗产的地位。然而，它也被排水系统和林业（非本地针叶树）大大改变了，使这些地区特别容易遭受灾难性的深度燃烧。与英国的其他野火不同，2019年5月的Flow Country火灾覆盖了一个非常大的区域，其中包括一系列条件下的泥炭地：排水，排水和绿化，恢复（通过森林移除和排水堵塞）和接近自然。这些地区也被积极用于科学研究，拥有广泛的先前数据以及目前已建立的研究人员和土地管理人员的成熟合作网络。因此，五月流国家火灾创造了一个前所未有的紧迫机会，可以量化火灾，干旱和过去人类干预对泥炭地碳储存和水质的相互影响。我们希望抓住这个机会。首先，我们要比较燃烧的严重程度，火灾期间的碳损失，以及不同泥炭地管理类型的初始恢复。为了做到这一点，我们将结合联合收割机地面测量，无人机图像和一个新的验证方法，使用卫星雷达数据来测量泥炭表面运动。这种方法之所以有效，是因为泥炭表面的运动是对泥炭中水分储存和泥炭表面植物类型的直接反应。这些反过来又是泥炭条件的主要指标。通过比较野火发生前后的数据，我们可以检查泥炭地从此类事件中恢复的能力。其次，我们将测量一系列燃烧和未燃烧的土地使用的水和气体碳排放量，并量化溶解有机物的数量和质量变化，以了解火灾造成的变化如何改变泥炭地C的命运。最后，我们将利用我们的新知识，并与土地管理者协商，比较不同的林业和森林沼泽恢复管理策略如何影响火灾风险和损害，以便为管理和政策提出建议。