Climate and Peatlands

• Main Authors: De Jong, Rixt, Blaauw, Maarten, Chambers, Frank M., Christensen, Torben R., De Vleeschouwer, François, Finsinger, Walter, Fronzek, Stefan, Johansson, Margareta, Kokfelt, Ulla, Lamentowicz, Mariusz, Le Roux, Gaël, Mauquoy, Dmitri, Mitchell, Edward A.D., Nichols, Jonathan E., Samaritani, Emanuela, Geel, Bas
• Other Authors: Brown University (USA), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - CNRS (FRANCE), Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne - EPFL (SWITZERLAND), University of Gloucestershire (UNITED KINGDOM), Institut National Polytechnique de Toulouse - INPT (FRANCE), Finnish Environment Institute - SYKE (FINLAND), Université Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier - UPS (FRANCE), Université de Liège (BELGIUM), Université de Montpellier 2 (FRANCE), Adam Mickiewicz University - AMU (POLAND), Lund University (SWEDEN), Queen's University Belfast - QUB (UNITED KINGDOM), Forschungsanstalt für Wald, Schnee und Landschaft - WSL (SWITZERLAND), University of Aberdeen - ABDN (UNITED KINGDOM), University of Amsterdam - UvA (NETHERLANDS), University of Bern (SWITZERLAND), Université de Neuchâtel (SWITZERLAND), Dodson, John, Laboratoire des Systèmes Ecologiques - ECOS (Lausanne, Switzerland)
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: Springer Netherlands 2010
• Subjects: Sciences de la Terre; Ecologie; Environnement; Climate; Peatland; permafrost
• Online Access: http://oatao.univ-toulouse.fr/11521/; http://oatao.univ-toulouse.fr/11521/1/De_Jong_11521.pdf; https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8716-4_5

Peatlands are an important natural archive for past climatic changes, primarily due to their sensitivity to changes in the water balance and the dating possibilities of peat sediments. In addition, peatlands are an important sink as well as potential source of greenhouse gases. The first part of this chapter discusses a range of well-established and novel proxies studied in peat cores (peat humification, macrofossils, testate amoebae, stomatal records from subfossil leaves, organic biomarkers and stable isotope ratios, aeolian sediment influx and geochemistry) that are used for climatic and environmental reconstructions, as well as recent developments in the dating of these sediments. The second part focuses on the role that peatland ecosystems may play as a source or sink of greenhouse gases. Emphasis is placed on the past and future development of peatlands in the discontinuous permafrost areas of northern Scandinavia, and the role of regenerating mined peatlands in north-western Europe as a carbon sink or source.