Vulnerability of globally important carbon stores to climate change examined through novel geophysical imaging

Overview:
Peatlands are a globally important carbon store, storing 50 times the amount of carbon released annually to the atmosphere through the combustion of fossil fuels. Currently peatland act as a net sink of CO2. However, the drying of these ecosystems under a changing climate will modify peatland carbon dynamics. As result, peatlands may provide a significant future source of atmospheric CO2.

Peatlands are patterned landscapes that function as fully 3-D systems. Despite this, current state-of-the-art investigations focus on individual 1-D vertical peat profiles; spatial interactions and feedbacks across the landscape have been largely ignored. This has produced potentially erroneous projections of future catastrophic carbon losses that are informing current restoration strategies and feeding directly to UK and international policy makers. Spatial interactions have been ignored because no measurement technique is available to examine peatlands in a spatially explicit manner.

The project aims to revolutionise the study of peatlands, using geophysical methods to place the important control of space, organisation and connectivity at the forefront of research efforts at a time when the vulnerability of these environments to changing climatic conditions and direct human disturbance is of key concern to current research activities and policy initiatives.

Methodology:
Characterise the spatial organisation of peat hydrophysical properties: Geophysical measurement approaches will be developed, tested and applied in order to characterize the spatial distribution of peat hydrophysical properties within a range of peatland environments within the UK and North America. This will identify how the subsurface hydrophysical properties are spatially organised across peatland ecosystems at a sub micro habitat scale.

Identify patterns and pathways of water flow: How the observed spatial organisation in peat hydrological properties impacts the patterns and pathways of water flow will be quantified. Patterns of water flow within the measured systems will be compared against artificially generated peatlands with hydrological properties showing a broad array of spatial patterns.
Response of peatland ecosystems to key disturbances: Response of such spatially integrated systems will be examined to determine the resilience of these environments to projected climatic change within the 21st century.

Training and skills:
CENTA students will attend 45 days training throughout their PhD including a 10 day placement. In the first year, students will be trained as a single cohort on environmental science, research methods and core skills. Throughout the PhD, training will progress from core skills sets to master classes specific to the student’s projects and themes.
In addition to the CENTA training, detailed training in the application and development of geophysical measurement methods and hydrological modelling approaches will be provided throughout the course of the PhD. The project will provide the student with a wide range of geophysical, hydrological and ecological measurement skills as well as field work, statistical, information technology, modelling, data handling and project management skills.

Partners and collaboration:
The research will be undertaken in close collaboration with a range of academic partners within the UK and also within the US and Canada. Further, the project will also make strong links with current industrial research collaborators within the Alberta Oil Sands (Syncrude and Canadian Natural Resources ltd). Knowledge from this project will be used to inform the reclamation of oil sand landscapes.

Possible timeline:
Year 1: Computer and laboratory analysis of geophysical measurement approaches linked to field based trials within the UK.

Year 2: Analysis of laboratory and field based measurement approaches with the development of the first publication from the PhD examining the capabilities of these novel measurement approaches. Hydrological modelling using initial data collected from the field based research will also be initiated. Further, the optimised field based measurement approach will be applied within international peatland ecosystems, examining spatial variability in hydrophysical properties within the peatland and at the interface of different landform types.

Year 3: Integration of modelling approaches with detailed knoweledge of the organisation of hydrophysical properites across different spatial scales. Senario testing of hydrological models using ensemble climate projections. Subsequent three publications from the PhD to be produced that present the varibilty in peat hydrophysical properties, their associated control on peatland ecohydrological function, and the spatial feedbacks that enhance the resilience of these systems to disturbance.