Disturbance and Restoration of Metal Contaminated Peatlands

泥炭地是最大的陆地碳储存库之一，在全球范围内持续存在了数千年。它们在全球范围内作为大气二氧化碳的长期汇，在区域内作为流域有毒金属的汇。因此，泥炭地生态系统在全球气候调节和水源保护中发挥着关键作用，因此，泥炭地生态系统的保护、管理和恢复已被确定为实现联合国可持续发展目标的一项关键活动。几个世纪以来，人类活动通过工业过程（如制造业、资源开采）释放的污染物在大气中的沉积污染了泥炭地。这方面的证据可以在世界各地的泥炭地找到，泥炭岩心记录显示，与欧洲罗马时期、18世纪和19世纪的工业革命以及20世纪含铅汽油的广泛使用有关的明显污染信号。高水平的金属污染可能导致维持关键生态系统功能（如碳固存）的泥炭地过程退化。这些泥炭地一旦遭到破坏，就非常容易受到火灾或排水等额外干扰，从而将有毒物质释放到环境和饮用水中。这些先前被隔离的金属的释放可以说是21世纪主要的当代全球环境挑战之一，但这是一个研究不足的研究领域，并且在专业领域之外知之甚少。在这个项目中，我们将通过建立一个跨学科的国际伙伴关系来解决这一知识差距，并由具有互补技能和专业知识的核心研究人员小组推动。通过项目会议和实地考察，我们将营造一个合作环境，分享见解和知识，以撰写一份议程设定的学术论文。我们将通过在线研讨会和网络研讨会促进更广泛的国际社会参与。该项目的研究结果将有助于更广泛的讨论，即如何最好地保护和恢复受污染的泥炭地，以便在面对未来气候和土地利用变化时提供恢复力。

Peatlands are one of the largest terrestrial carbon stores and have persisted across the globe for millennia. They function globally as long-term sinks of atmospheric carbon dioxide and regionally as watershed sinks of toxic metals. Therefore, peatland ecosystems play a critical role in both global climate regulation and source water protection and, as such, their conservation, management and restoration have been identified as a key activity to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals.Human activity has contaminated peatlands over many centuries through the atmospheric deposition of pollutants released by industrial processes (e.g., manufacturing, resource extraction). Evidence of this can be found in peatlands around the world and peat core records show pronounced pollution signals associated with the Roman period in Europe, the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries, and widespread use of leaded petrol in the 20th century. High rates of metal pollution can lead to the degradation of peatland processes that sustain critical ecosystem functions, such as carbon sequestration. Once damaged, these peatlands become very susceptible to additional disturbances such as fire or drainage, which can release their toxic legacy into the environment and drinking water. Release of these previously sequestered metals arguably represents one of the major contemporary global environmental challenges of the 21st century, yet this is an understudied research field and is poorly understood outside specialist areas. In this project, we will address this knowledge gap by building an interdisciplinary, international partnership, facilitated by a core group of researchers with complementary skills and expertise. Through project meetings and field visits, we will foster a collaborative environment to share insights and knowledge to produce an agenda-setting academic paper. We will create wider international community engagement through online workshops and webinars. The findings from the project will contribute to broader debates about how to best preserve and restore contaminated peatlands in order to provide resilience in the face of future climate and land use change.