Collaborative Research: Hydrologic Disturbance in Tropical Peatlands: Linking Drainage, Soil Moisture, Flammability, and Carbon Fluxes

泥炭地是一种湿地，里面堆积着正在分解的植物物质。东南亚泥炭地的排水造成了严重的环境破坏。当泥炭地被排干时，比如修建运河时，地下水位下降，导致二氧化碳排放。排干的泥炭更易燃，在干旱的年份，泥炭火灾产生的烟雾会以有毒的雾霾覆盖该地区。最终，随着持续的排水，随着泥炭地向海平面下沉，大片地区将定期发生洪水。尽管存在这一系列危险事件，但几乎没有工具可以管理热带泥炭地的水流。该项目的目标是更好地理解干扰（如排水或土地覆盖变化）、泥炭地水文变化和未来火灾风险之间的关系。这是通过使用新的卫星数据和建立基于实地测量的模型来完成的。该项目调查了降水模式的变化和扰动对未来火灾风险的影响。其他研究目标包括设计对火灾风险和二氧化碳排放影响较小的新型运河网络。这项工作的影响直接传达给当地的决策者。该项目扩大了针对美国初中和高中教师的气候变化教师教育计划。在过去的三十年中，东南亚的热带泥炭地受到土地利用变化和相关泥炭地排水的破坏。这对人类健康（通过增加泥炭的可燃性，其阴燃火灾导致覆盖人口稠密的周围地区的大规模雾霾事件）、基础设施（通过泥炭沉降）和气候（通过使排放后大量储存的二氧化碳使泥炭氧化）造成重大威胁。然而，热带泥炭地的水文及其对二氧化碳排放和火灾风险的影响仍然知之甚少。这项工作建立了利用遥感绘制泥炭地和排水渠地图的新工具。这些工具与新的水文模型相结合，可以更好地理解土地利用变化、泥炭地排水和干扰影响（包括火灾风险）之间的关系。实地测量与遥感数据和新开发的水文模型相结合，绘制了整个地区的二氧化碳排放量图，解开了气候变化和土地利用变化对未来火灾风险的作用，并开发了控制洪水但降低火灾风险的排水系统设计的新工具。该项目的结果直接传达给文莱和新加坡的政府官员。该项目为斯坦福大学气候变化教育项目的初中和高中教师创建了一个新的组成部分。该项目由极端事件预测和恢复计划资助。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Peatlands are areas of wetlands with accumulated plant material that is decomposing. Drainage of Southeast Asian peatlands causes serious environmental damage. When peatlands are drained, such as when canals are built, the water tables drops, driving carbon dioxide emissions. Drained peat is more flammable and smoke from peat fires covers the region in toxic haze during dry years. Ultimately, with continued drainage, large areas will regularly flood as peatlands subside towards sea level. Despite this dangerous chain of events, few tools exist to manage the flow of water in tropical peatlands. The goal of this project is to better understand the relationship between disturbance (such as drainage or land cover change), changes to peatland hydrology, and future fire risk. This is done using new satellite data and by building models based on field measurements. The project investigates how changing precipitation patterns and disturbance each effect future fire risk. Additional research goals include the design of new types of canal networks that have less impact on fire risk and carbon dioxide emissions. The implications of the work are communicated directly to local policy makers. The project expands a climate change teacher education program for middle and high school teachers in the United States. Over the last three decades, tropical peatlands in Southeast Asia have been disrupted by land use change and associated peatland drainage. This causes significant threats to human health (through increased peat flammability, whose smoldering fires lead to large haze events that cover the densely populated surrounding regions), infrastructure (through peat subsidence) and climate (by enabling the emissions of large quantities of stored carbon dioxide after drainage allows peat oxidation). However, the hydrology of tropical peatlands, and its implications for carbon dioxide emissions and fire risk remain poorly understood. This work builds new tools to map both peatland and drainage canals using remote sensing. These tools are combined with new hydrologic models to better understand the relationship between land use change, peatland drainage and disturbance impacts including fire risk. Field measurements are combined with remote sensing data and newly developed hydrologic models to map carbon dioxide emissions across the region, to disentangle the roles of climatic changes and land use changes on future fire risk, and to develop new tools for drainage system designs that control flooding but reduce fire risks. The results of this project are communicated directly to government officials in Brunei and Singapore. The project creates a new component of the Stanford Climate Change Education Program for middle and high school teachers. This project is funded by the Prediction of and Resilience against Extreme Events Program.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.