For Peat’s Sake
It’s November and that means that the UN Climate Conference is in the news. COP27 – the 27th meeting of the Conference of Parties – is happening in Egypt; these conferences are the foremost global forums for multilateral discussions of climate change. Among the important topics of discussion at this year’s meeting is the fate of the world’s peatlands.
What are peatlands?
Peatlands are wetlands in which water-logged conditions prevent plant material from fully breaking down. In these circumstances, production of organic material outpaces its decomposition and the result is an accumulation of peat. Most peatlands occur at high latitude in the boreal and temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere, but peatlands exist in every climate zone and on all continents. They are the most widespread of all wetland types, representing 50-70% of the world’s wetlands and covering 3% of the land and freshwater surface of the planet (International Peatland Society). They go by a variety of great names – mires, bogs, moors, muskegs, fens – depending on where you’re from.
Do we have peatlands in the Adirondacks?
Absolutely, several types including bogs and fens and everything in between. Some of our most charismatic megawetlands are peatlands: Bloomingdale Bog, Massawepie Mire, the Osgood River Muskeg, Madawaska Wetland, Spring Pond Bog. These are some of the largest, and indeed what the Adirondacks have that nearby peatlands elsewhere in the northeast do not is sheer size. Small bogs and fens are scattered throughout our region but those over a mile long, like Spring Pond Bog, are a rarity. We also have many small peatlands and abundant opportunities to see and interact with these habitats. Barnum Bog at the Paul Smith’s VIC, Silver Lake Bog – a Nature Conservancy property in Black Brook, and Ferd’s Bog in Inlet are all great examples. If you would rather paddle, the Marion River, which connects Raquette and Utowana lakes and features on the route of the Adirondack Canoe Classic (90 Miler) is a well-known fen. The Osgood, the St. Regis, and the Chubb all have stretches of excellent bog and fen habitat, as do our lakeshores. A significant amount of peatland habitat exists floating on the edges of lakes and ponds like Oseetah in Saranac Lake or, Little Tupper and Round Lake in Hamilton County.
Why are peatlands important?
Peatlands are critically important to the world’s climate because they store vast amounts of carbon. Because peat is continually accumulating in these systems, peatlands are carbon rich and sequester more carbon than any other type of terrestrial ecosystem, playing a major role in the global carbon balance (Joosten and Clarke 2002). In addition to being critically important regulators of the global climate, peatlands are also important for several other reasons. They are wetlands and, like all wetlands, critical to water quality, providing crucial functions like water storage, filtration, and flood mitigation.
People in bogs - Steve Langdon at Spring Pond, Brendan Wiltse at small bog near PSC, Dan Spada at Barnum, PSC VIC
Peatlands are important as habitat for a variety of specialized plant and animal species. They are characterized by extreme conditions; it takes an exceptional plant or animal to be able to tolerate these acidic environments and not many of them can but what they lack in species richness, peatlands make up for in specialization and uniqueness, especially here in the Adirondacks. Inhabitants of peatlands have to contend with high water content, low oxygen in the root layer, poor heat conduction, low nutrients and minerals, extreme temperatures and a short growing season. Plants like Sphagnum, leatherleaf, bog laurel, Labrador tea, black spruce and tamarack are icons of peatlands, with some plant species so specialized to these habitats that they have evolved to be carnivorous. Pitcher plants and sundews have found ways to turn the table on the general order of things and to consume the abundant insects found in bogs. Birds too are abundant in peatlands. Boreal species like Canada jay, black-backed woodpecker, rusty blackbird, Lincoln’s sparrow, and olive-sided flycatcher can be found here; we track them every breeding season.
Cold air pooling at Shingle Shanty Preserve and Research Stations
Photo: Steve Langdon
In our region and elsewhere, peatlands are important climate change refugia. Refugia are areas relatively buffered from contemporary climate change over time that enable persistence of valued physical, ecological, and sociocultural resources. These “slow lanes” can protect native species and ecosystems from the negative effects of climate change over short time scales, and over longer time scales can be havens for biodiversity and ecosystem function (Morelli et al. 2020). The prevalence of water and the challenging conditions for tree growth in peatlands create habitats where the climate is generally cooler and more extreme than that of the surrounding landscape. In fact, topography in some locations can lead to phenomena like cold-air pooling and set up microclimates whereby the local temperature is decoupled from regional conditions (Pastore et al. 2021). Steve Langdon, our collaborator and director of the Shingle Shanty Preserve and Research Station, has observed this pattern and documented strong differences between regionally modeled temperatures and data collected by ground level loggers in 10 peatlands at Shingle Shanty. In our boreal bird research, we find that temperature during both the breeding and non-breeding season is important in shaping long-term dynamics of these populations, but empirical temperature data from peatlands are rare. Steve’s work to document fine-scale temperatures in the wetlands at Shingle Shanty is helping us understand how microclimate conditions may influence peatland bird communities. Like moose, marten, mink frog and other northern species, boreal birds in the park are near the edge of their North American range in the Adirondacks. Rear edge populations like these can be disproportionately important for the survival and evolution of biota (Hampe and Petit 2005) and can help us understand the implications of climate change in our region.
What are the threats to peatlands and how can we protect them?
Peatlands have not had an easy history. Pulitzer Prize winning author Annie Proulx, who gave us The Shipping News and Brokeback Mountain, writes eloquently about them in her latest book – Bog, Fen, and Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis (Proulx 2022). As much as 15% of the world’s peatlands have been drained for agriculture, peat mining, grazing, and forestry, with another 5-10% degraded by alteration or removal of vegetation (UNEP 2021). Though degradation has slowed in the temperate and boreal regions, it continues at a high rate in the tropics. This, in combination with the increasing vulnerability of boreal peatlands to fire (Lin et al. 2021), means global peatlands are at risk of changing from net sinks to sources of carbon. We can protect peatlands across the planet by increasing the awareness and appreciation of these historically misunderstood ecosystems, whose contributions are undervalued and whose conservation suffers from chronic underinvestment (UNEP 2021). There are actions we can take locally to protect peatlands as well. The Adirondack Park has some 70,000 acres of northern peatland and fen habitats, with approximately 70% of them on the Forest Preserve or conservation easement lands (Glennon and Curran 2013). Stewardship of peatlands in the Adirondacks therefore includes management of infrastructure, roads, and other anthropogenic impacts on private lands and of recreational activities on state and easement lands. Though many of the very large charismatic megawetlands are fairly well protected, most wetlands are small and scattered throughout the park. If you’re lucky enough to have peatlands nearby, recognize them for their role in regulating our climate and harboring iconic Adirondack wildlife, and try to protect them by preventing their destruction by roads, infrastructure, drainage, or poorly-managed timber harvest or recreational activities (University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension). They are worthy of our admiration and careful stewardship.
Literature Cited
Glennon, M.J. and R.P. Curran. 2013. How much is enough? Distribution and protection status of habitats in the Adirondacks. Adirondack Journal of Environmental Studies 19:36-46.
Hampe, A. and R.J. Petit. 2005. Conserving biodiversity under climate change: the rear edge matters. Ecology Letters 8(5):461-467.
International Peatland Society. www.peatlands.org
Joosten, H., and D. Clarke. 2002. Wise use of mires and peatlands: Background and principles including a framework for decision-making. International Mire Conservation Group and International Peatland Society. Saarijärvi, Finland.
Lin, S., Y. Liu, and X. Huang. 2021. Climate-induced Arctic-boreal peatland fire and carbon loss in the 21st century. Science of the Total Environment 796: 148924.
Morelli, T.L., C.W. Barrows, A.R. Ramirez, J.M. Cartwright, D.D. Ackerly, T.D. Eaves, J.L. Ebersole, M.A. Krawchuk, B.H. Letcher, M.F. Mahalovich, G.W. Meigs, J.L. Michalak, C.I. Millar, R.M. Quinones, D. Stralberg, and J.T. Thorne. 2020. Climate-change refugia: biodiversity in the slow lane. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 18(5): 228-234.
Pastore, M.A., A.T. Classen, A.W. D’Amato, J.R. Foster, and E.C. Adair. 2022. Cold-air pools as microrefugia for ecosystem functions in the face of climate change. Ecology 103: e3717.
Proulx, A. 2022. Fen, bog, and swamp: A short history of peatland destruction and its role in the climate crisis. Simon and Shuster.
United Nations Environment Program. 2021. Economics of peatlands conservation, restoration, and sustainable management: A policy report for the Global Peatlands Initiative. E.B. Barbier and J.C. Burgess. United Nations Environment Program, Nairobi.
University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension. Habitat Stewardship Series: Peatlands. New Hampshire Wildlife Action Plan. https://extension.unh.edu/resource/peatlands