Ecohydrology and resilience of peatland ecosystems

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Peatlands cover ~17% of Canada's land surface and are located primarily in the boreal and subarctic ecozones. Peatland ecosystems represent a global climate regulator and a regionally important water resource, containing one-third of the global soil carbon pool and accounting for 10% of the global surface fresh water. However, climate change is expected to lead to drier conditions, increased vegetation stress and a greater incidence of wildfire [Flannigan et al. 2005]. While field evidence suggests that peatlands are generally resilient ecosystems, some modelling studies suggest peatlands will represent a strong and persistent positive feedback to climate change. The aim of this research is to quantify peatland ecohydrological resilience. Consequently, there is an urgent need to develop and adopt a new approach to quantify ecohydrological processes in peatlands to determine their resilience to climate change mediated disturbance. The Peatland Hydrological Impacts (PHI) model will be developed from moss ecophysiology lab experiments and field based process quantification of peat resilience in response to varying severity of drought and wildfires. The model will be used to simulate the effects of climate change on peatland ecohydrology and carbon biogeochemistry.