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Description
Mires remain the most significant terrestrial carbon stock of the world. The most up to date research results have informed that former estimates of the amounts of carbon stored in mires can be underestimated by even as high as 100%. Dominant direct drivers of mire status originate from hydrology, namely the type (i.e., rain- or groundwater feeding) and quantities of water supplied to a mire and removed from this system in result of natural drainage and evapotranspiration. Impaired peat accumulation processes can result in a positive feedback of the emission of CO2 as a response to supply of mineral-rich groundwater (resulting from permafrost thaw and increase of the fen catchment area in Arctic palsa mires) and water balance changes (resulting from shortages of water in temperate fens and sloping fens). FORCE project results are likely to influence the global perspective of the need for conservation of natural mires and considering abrupt climatic change as a challenge for mire-related and water-related elements of carbon cycle. It is likely that the messages resulting from the FORCE project implementation will influence international strategies oriented at promotion of mire research and conservation, placing new threads of emissions and carbon accumulation in a management context.
Summary of project results
FORCE project focused at the verification of the hypothesis that water balance and carbon balance of mires remains in a positive feedback with the abrupt climatic changes, resulting in expected decrease of carbon accumulation in peatlands and an increased emission of greenhouse gasses. Therefore, within the project, the team of 18 specialists representing 6 research units solved several research tasks grouped in 6 separate workpackages.
Majority of the processes has not been addressed in the scientific literature so far (e.g., emissions of CO2 from groundwater depressurized at the mire/groundwater interface; assessment of the share of emissions from aquatic ecosystems and groundwater to the emissions from the peat; assessing the role of the abrupt climatic changes in hydrological processes of mires and their catchments). Novelty of research tasks and expected results and outputs of the project related to the verification of its main hypothesis are likely to influence the global perspective of the need for conservation of natural mires and considering abrupt climatic change as a challenge for mire-related and water-related elements of carbon cycle in the global scale. It is likely that the messages resulting from the FORCE project implementation will influence international NGO strategies oriented at promotion of mire research and conservation, placing new threads of emissions and carbon accumulation in a management context. The FORCE project is intended to promote development of scientific staff of research institutions participating in the application, including providing positions to 2 post doc researchers and 1 Ph.D. student. Interdisciplinarity of the research team and scheduled tasks promotes the integration of physical, technical, biological and Earth sciences.
The most important project achievements:
- documentation, that degraded palsa peatlands most likely turn to carbon-sink peatlands (Grygoruk et al., 2024),
- first ever documented measurement of N2O emissions from pristine mire,
- development of new method to assess peatland subsidence (Ghezelayagh et al., 2024),
- documentation of the response of continental bog to rewetting (Stachowicz et al., 2024, in review),
- documentation that palsa peatlands and temperate peatlands are more prone to hydrological and biogeochemical
changes due to the abrupt climate change than continental and oceanic bogs (Kustina et al., 2024, in prep.),
- development and successful application of novel field research devices (groundwater gas sampling piezometer) and
enhancement of the autonomous chambers for GHG flux measurements,
- establishment of extensive monitoring networks in 5 peatlands that will be sustained after the project durability,
- successful application for another joint research project PEATWAY (NINA & SGGW) that will strengthen the
research cooperation between Poland and Norway.
All of the results of the FORCE project put a new light on natural peatlands'' evolution and their response to the abrupt climatic change. Revealed emissions of N2O (described above) are novel to science and – after the confirmation of these results and their potential publication – will change the perception of mires as contributors of this GHG. Developed remote-sensing-based indicators of peatland subsidence (Ghezelayagh et al., 2024) opens a new field in the analysis of large peatlands. As the subsidence is strongly connected to GHG emissions, peatland degradation, changes in physical parameters of the soils, groundwater levels, and vegetation dynamics, we foresee these results and approach to be further developed and widely cited. These results combine the traditional approach to peatland subsidence (e.g., Wösten et al., 1997) and the possible upscaling of the results to the continental scale.
We find this a significant contribution of the FORCE project to environmental engineering, Earth sciences and environmental sciences (environmental management). The application of ABEM Terrameter LS-2 to peatland research was a novel approach. We managed to integrate the biogeochemical research and earth sciences to enhance environmental engineering approach to peatland documentation.
We developed novel tools to sample groundwater for GHG concentration assessment (piezometer) that allowed us to open a new field of peatland hydrology and biogeochemistry research. We managed to merge the geotechnical methodology and environmental sciences to describe the structure of the peatland. This was a novel approach. Our findings from studied peatlands provide solid evidence of their status that can be considered a reference for their changes in the future. We expect that our approach to peatland research presented in the FORCE project will be continued by the range of other research teams – we demonstrated that the successful cooperation of hydrologists, biologists, biogeochemists, geographers, and geotechnicians led to the development of new tools and research protocols, pushing forward the boundaries of all of these research disciplines.
Summary of bilateral results
The bilateral cooperation was satisfactory. The joint Polish-Norwegian publication was prepared. The project application was prepared in the consortium of NINA, SGGW, University of Oslo and Western Norway University of Applied Sciences. In the case of NINA and SGGW this initiative emerged directly from the FORCE project. We observed that the scale of wise peatland management is to small for the appropriate planning of environmental conservation on these ecosystems. The project was evaluatedpositive and granted by the Research Council of Norway and the joint research project was granted.