A radiative forcing analysis of tropical peatlands before and after their conversion to agricultural plantations

Global Change Biology
René DommainPaul H Glaser

Abstract

The tropical peat swamp forests of South-East Asia are being rapidly converted to agricultural plantations of oil palm and Acacia creating a significant global "hot-spot" for CO2 emissions. However, the effect of this major perturbation has yet to be quantified in terms of global warming potential (GWP) and the Earth's radiative budget. We used a GWP analysis and an impulse-response model of radiative forcing to quantify the climate forcing of this shift from a long-term carbon sink to a net source of greenhouse gases (CO2 and CH4 ). In the GWP analysis, five tropical peatlands were sinks in terms of their CO2 equivalent fluxes while they remained undisturbed. However, their drainage and conversion to oil palm and Acacia plantations produced a dramatic shift to very strong net CO2 -equivalent sources. The induced losses of peat carbon are ~20× greater than the natural CO2 sequestration rates. In contrast, a radiative forcing model indicates that the magnitude of this shift from a net cooling to warming effect is ultimately related to the size of an individual peatland's carbon pool. The continuous accumulation of carbon in pristine tropical peatlands produced a progressively negative radiative forcing (i.e., cooling) that range...Continue Reading

References

Dec 21, 2012·The New Phytologist·Sunitha R PangalaVincent Gauci
Apr 2, 2015·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·Ana Maria Roxana PetrescuAlessandro Cescatti
May 25, 2016·Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences·S E Page, A Hooijer
Sep 28, 2016·Global Change Biology·Lahiru S WijedasaRoxane Andersen
May 1, 1991·Ecological Applications : a Publication of the Ecological Society of America·Eville Gorham

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Citations

Jan 29, 2020·Global Change Biology·Chandra S DeshmukhAnkur R Desai
Apr 4, 2020·Nature Communications·Anke GüntherJohn Couwenberg
Aug 12, 2020·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·Gustaf HugeliusZicheng Yu

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