ORGANIZED ORAL SESSION 13

OOS-13: Gas exchange and global change in peatlands: From soil to satellite

Tuesday, August 9, 8 AM - 11:30 AM, Meeting Rooms 510b and 510d, Level 5, Palais des congrès de Montréal

Organizers:  Juul Limpens (Juul.Limpens@WUR.nl), Gabriela Schaepman, Mats Nilsson, Monique Heijmans

Description: Peatlands store approximately as much Carbon (C) as is present in our atmosphere, making them important players in the global C cycle. At present many peatlands seem poised between being sinks and sources for greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄) and nitrous oxide (NO₂). This precarious balance makes these ecosystems vulnerable to environmental disturbances such as rising temperature, changes in precipitation, and nitrogen deposition, each of which may force peatlands towards being sources of greenhouse gases, creating a positive feedback that might ultimately affect the global climate. This session will address the controls on CO₂ and CH₄ fluxes from peatlands at different spatial scales and try to answer how these fluxes may be affected by environmental changes. Key-note lectures range from bio-geochemical processes in the soil, via gas flux measurements at the plot scale, the use of eddy covariance data, and remote sensing by satellites. Emphasis will be on how to scale up and what to scale up.