COMPLETED PROJECT
Peatlands on Fire
Wildfires are becoming more frequent and severe in boreal ecosystems.
Fire presents a significant risk to peatlands (a type of wetland), which contain more than one-third of the world's terrestrial carbon.
What determines the resilience of peatlands to wildfire? How do we rapidly restore the carbon lost during burning?
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Wildfires burn over 9000 ha of land in Canada per year.
This releases over 27 billion tonnes of carbon annually, 6 billion of which are from peatlands.
Peatlands typically have a high resilience to fire due to keystone Sphangum mosses, which retain moisture, prevent burning, and regrow quickly.
But warmer, drier conditions due to climate change are making peatlands more susceptible to large fires.
In 2018, over 11,000 hectares of the Georgian Bay UNESCO Biosphere Reserve burned in a record-setting wildfire.
GEORGIAN BAY BIOSPHERE
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ONTARIO
UTIKAMA REGION
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ALBERTA
We studied how boreal peatlands recover from wildfire.
Which factors dictate how severely a peatland will burn? How do beavers reduce the fire risk?
How does the vegetation community recover after wildfire, and how does it evolve over time?
Can we fast-track moss recovery after wildfire using novel restoration techniques?
FINDINGS
Moss Transplants
Our research demonstrates that transplanting moss from donor peatlands can jump-start the recovery of peatlands burned by wildfire. Keystone mosses can re-establish the surface layer in conditions that are hostile to new vegetation.