Low Evapotranspiration Enhances the Resilience of Peatland Carbon Stocks to Fire

Boreal peatlands may be vulnerable to projected changes in the wildfire regime under future climates. Extreme drying during the sensitive postfire period may exceed peatland ecohydrological resilience, triggering long‐term degradation of these globally significant carbon stocks. Despite these concer...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Geophysical research letters 2017-09, Vol.44 (18), p.9341-9349
Main Authors: Kettridge, N., Lukenbach, M. C., Hokanson, K. J., Hopkinson, C., Devito, K. J., Petrone, R. M., Mendoza, C. A., Waddington, J. M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Carbon
Climate
Climatic extremes
Drying
Ecohydrology
Evapotranspiration
Fires
Future climates
Peat
peatland
Peatlands
Pest control
Repellency
Repellents
Resilience
Stocks
Surface water
temperature
water repellency
Water supply
wildfire
Wildfires
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Summary:Boreal peatlands may be vulnerable to projected changes in the wildfire regime under future climates. Extreme drying during the sensitive postfire period may exceed peatland ecohydrological resilience, triggering long‐term degradation of these globally significant carbon stocks. Despite these concerns, we show low peatland evapotranspiration at both the plot‐ and landscape‐scale postfire, in water‐limited peatlands dominated by feather moss that are ubiquitous across continental western Canada. Low postfire evapotranspiration enhances the resilience of carbon stocks in such peatlands to wildfire disturbance and reinforces their function as a regional source of water. Near‐surface water repellency may provide an important, previously unexplored, regulator of peatland evapotranspiration that can induce low evapotranspiration in the initial postfire years by restricting the supply of water to the peat surface. Key Points Evapotranspiration from feather moss peatlands is low following wildfire Low evapotranspiration is identified at the landscape scale through the observation of concomitant high surface temperatures Water repellency may act as an important, previously unidentified, control on peatland water loss via evaporation
ISSN:0094-8276
1944-8007
DOI:10.1002/2017GL074186