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Published: Wednesday, 09 December 2020 17:10
Read about the latest PAGES' news, meetings, and opportunities from around the world in this month's e-news.
Highlights include Scientific Steering Committee announcements and call for applications; the reopening of the call for PAGES memories for our 30th anniversary magazine; AGU announcements; submit an abstract by 13 January for one of the PAGES working group sessions at the EGU in 2021 (vEGU21: Gather Online); IPCC AR6 updates; take the PAGES Survey; application deadlines to propose new working groups or apply for workshop support; extensive working group news, products, webinar recordings, and rescheduled meeting information; ECN news; and other paleo announcements.
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Published: Wednesday, 09 December 2020 11:21
A new Carbon in Peat on EArth through Time (C-PEAT) working group paper reviews the main agents of change of peatland carbon stocks and fluxes.
The carbon balance of peatlands is predicted to shift from a sink to a source this century. However, peatland ecosystems are still omitted from the main Earth system models that are used for future climate change projections, and they are not considered in integrated assessment models that are used in impact and mitigation studies.
Led by working group leaders Julie Loisel and Angela Gallego-Sala, authors use evidence synthesized from the literature and an expert elicitation to define and quantify the leading drivers of change that have impacted peatland carbon stocks during the Holocene and predict their effect during this century and in the far future.
These drivers include those that induce rapid peatland carbon losses (peat fire, land-use change, and permafrost thaw) and gradual drivers that can lead to rapid, nonlinear responses in peatland ecosystems (temperature increase, water table drawdown, sea-level rise, and nutrient addition).
Authors also identify uncertainties and knowledge gaps in the scientific community and provide insight towards better integration of peatlands into modeling frameworks.
Access the Nature Climate Change paper "Expert assessment of future vulnerability of the global peatland carbon sink" here.
Find out more about the C-PEAT working group here.