Temporally dynamic carbon dioxide and methane emission factors for rewetted peatlands

Rewetting drained peatlands is recognized as a leading and effective natural solution to curb greenhouse gas emissions. However, rewetting creates novel ecosystems whose emission behaviors are not adequately captured by currently used emission factors. These emission factors are applied immediately after rewetting, thus do not reflect the temporal dynamics of greenhouse gas emissions during the period wherein there is a transition to a rewetted steady-state. Here, we provide long-term data showing a mismatch between actual emissions and default emission factors and revealing the temporal patterns of annual carbon dioxide and methane fluxes in a rewetted peatland site in northeastern Germany. We show that site-level annual emissions of carbon dioxide and methane approach the IPCC default emission factors and those suggested for the German national inventory report only between 13 to 16 years after rewetting. Over the entire study period, we observed a source-to-sink transition of annual carbon dioxide fluxes with a decreasing trend of −0.36 t CO2-C ha−1 yr−1 and a decrease in annual methane emissions of −23.6 kg CH4 ha−1 yr−1. Our results indicate that emission factors should represent the temporally dynamic nature of peatlands post-rewetting and consider the effect of site characteristics to better estimate associated annual emissions.

This project is supported by the WET HORIZONS project.