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

泥炭地是湿地的区域，积累了正在分解的植物材料。东南亚泥炭地的排水造成严重的环境破坏。当泥炭地被排干时，比如当运河被修建时，地下水位下降，导致二氧化碳排放。排干的泥炭更易燃，在干旱年份，泥炭火灾产生的烟雾使该地区笼罩在有毒烟雾中。最终，随着持续的排水，随着泥炭地向海平面下沉，大片地区将定期洪水泛滥。尽管这一系列危险的事件，很少有工具存在管理热带泥炭地的水流。该项目的目标是更好地了解干扰（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在实地测量的基础上建立模型来实现的。该项目调查了降水模式和干扰的变化如何影响未来的火灾风险。 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决策者。该项目扩大了美国初中和高中教师的气候变化教师教育计划。在过去的三十年里，东南亚的热带泥炭地已经被土地利用的变化和相关的泥炭地排水所破坏。这对人类健康（通过增加泥炭可燃性，其阴燃导致覆盖人口密集的周边地区的大烟雾事件），基础设施（通过泥炭沉降）和气候（通过排水允许泥炭氧化后排放大量储存的二氧化碳）造成重大威胁。然而，热带泥炭地的水文学及其对二氧化碳排放和火灾风险的影响仍然知之甚少。这项工作建立了新的工具，利用遥感来绘制泥炭地和排水渠。这些工具与新的水文模型相结合，以更好地了解土地利用变化，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，以绘制整个区域的二氧化碳排放量，理清气候变化和土地使用变化对未来火灾风险的作用，并开发控制洪水但减少火灾风险的排水系统设计的新工具。该项目的成果直接传达给文莱和新加坡的政府官员。该项目为中学和高中教师创建了斯坦福大学气候变化教育计划的一个新组成部分。该项目由极端事件预测和恢复计划资助。该奖项反映了NSF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 table 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.