The influence of climate on peatland extent in Western Siberia since the Last Glacial Maximum

• Published in: Scientific Reports
• Main Authors: Alexandrov, G. A., Brovkin, V. A., Kleinen, T.
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Nature Publishing Group 2016
• Subjects: Article; Subarctic; taiga; Siberia
• Online Access: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4837369/; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27095029; https://doi.org/10.1038/srep24784

Boreal and subarctic peatlands are an important dynamical component of the earth system. They are sensitive to climate change, and could either continue to serve as a carbon sink or become a carbon source. Climatic thresholds for switching peatlands from sink to source are not well defined, and therefore, incorporating peatlands into Earth system models is a challenging task. Here we introduce a climatic index, warm precipitation excess, to delineate the potential geographic distribution of boreal peatlands for a given climate and landscape morphology. This allows us to explain the present-day distribution of peatlands in Western Siberia, their absence during the Last Glacial Maximum, their expansion during the mid-Holocene, and to form a working hypothesis about the trend to peatland degradation in the southern taiga belt of Western Siberia under an RCP 8.5 scenario for the projected climate in year 2100.