Recent climate change has driven divergent hydrological shifts in high-latitude peatlands

• Published in: Nature Communications
• Main Authors: Zhang, Hui, Väliranta, Minna, Swindles, Graeme T., Aquino-López, Marco A., Mullan, Donal, Tan, Ning, Amesbury, Matthew, Babeshko, Kirill V., Bao, Kunshan, Bobrov, Anatoly, Chernyshov, Viktor, Davies, Marissa A., Diaconu, Andrei-Cosmin, Feurdean, Angelica, Finkelstein, Sarah A., Garneau, Michelle, Guo, Zhengtang, Jones, Miriam C., Kay, Martin, Klein, Eric S., Lamentowicz, Mariusz, Magnan, Gabriel, Marcisz, Katarzyna, Mazei, Natalia, Mazei, Yuri, Payne, Richard, Pelletier, Nicolas, Piilo, Sanna R., Pratte, Steve, Roland, Thomas, Saldaev, Damir, Shotyk, William, Sim, Thomas G., Sloan, Thomas J., Słowiński, Michał, Talbot, Julie, Taylor, Liam, Tsyganov, Andrey N., Wetterich, Sebastian, Xing, Wei
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: /dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/climate_action; name=SDG 13 - Climate Action; permafrost
• Online Access: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/publications/1eeb36d1-df34-48ed-b76e-db89b26f39ea; https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-32711-4; https://pureadmin.qub.ac.uk/ws/files/359494689/s41467_022_32711_4.pdf

High-latitude peatlands are changing rapidly in response to climate change, including permafrost thaw. Here, we reconstruct hydrological conditions since the seventeenth century using testate amoeba data from 103 high-latitude peat archives. We show that 54% of the peatlands have been drying and 32% have been wetting over this period, illustrating the complex ecohydrological dynamics of high latitude peatlands and their highly uncertain responses to a warming climate.