User:Herryhen/sandbox

Article Evaluation

 * 1) Everything in the article is relevant to the topic and nothing is distracting.
 * 2) The article is neutral, the claims are not biased towards any position.
 * 3) Not all viewpoints are necessarily represented because it is a small article, but the work is represented properly.
 * 4) The citation links work, and the sources support the claims in the article.
 * 5) Each fact is reference with an appropriate and reliable reference. The information comes from mostly academic sources, and is not biased.
 * 6) The information is not out of date. The proposed addition of the Carbon Storage section will include numbers that are relevant.
 * 7) The Talk page of the article is empty, except for someone suggesting a contradiction.
 * 8) The article is part of the WikiProject Ecology and WikiProject Geography. The article has been rated as Start-class on quality, and Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.
 * 9) The page gives different information, such as specific properties of the mires. The page mentions the height of a mire above a bedrock and its chemical composition. Whereas in class, we discussed the impacts of mire ecosystem and how they influence the carbon cycle.

Purpose of our Contribution
Here is a written up collection of the scientific findings on how carbon storage in mires is affecting the biogeochemical process of carbon, climate change, and impacts on society, agriculture, and industries.

Add to Article
The article we added to is the Wetland article. We added information into the Climate: Temperature section about how peatlands affect permafrost.

Draft for our Article (Brainstorm)
These are the subheadings we used to organize our work, and they are all addressed in our final draft.


 * How carbon dioxide levels change with water table position


 * How methane levels vary with water table position and temperature
 * How mires preserve biodiversity
 * How peat contributes to the sequestration of carbon
 * How will society, the economy, agriculture, and industries be impacted
 * How mires impact climate change
 * How mires are managed worldwide (carbopeat)
 * How much carbon is being sequestered in peats vs emitted methane

Our rough write-up was done on Google Docs, the viewable link is here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HccZADJkJgl4HnoisRwPAjfq4lXiiykEorluAPTY_fE/edit?usp=sharing.

Carbon Storage
All types of mires share the common characteristic of being saturated with water at least seasonally with actively forming peat while having its own set of vegetation and organisms.

Biogeochemical process of carbon
Mires influence carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere such that when the water table rises, such as during a rainstorm, the peat and its microbes are submerged under water and inhibits the access to oxygen, giving opportunity for anaerobic microorganisms to flourish. Carbon dioxide is released when the water table shrinks, such as during a drought, as this supplies the aerobic microbes with oxygen to decompose the peat, subsequently releasing carbon dioxide. Levels of methane, CH4, also varies with the water table position and somewhat with temperature. Methanogens are responsible for producing methane via decomposition of the peat which consequently increases as the water table rises and oxygen levels are depleted. Increased temperatures in the soil also contributes to increased seasonal methane flux, though at a lower intensity. It is shown that the methane increased by as much as 300% seasonal from increased precipitation and temperature of the soil.

Mires are important reservoirs of climatic information to the past because they are sensitive to changes in the environment and can reveal levels of isotopes, pollutants, macrofossils, metals from the atmosphere, and pollen. For example, carbon-14 dating can reveal the age of the peat. The dredging and destruction of a mire will release the carbon dioxide that could reveal irreplaceable information about the past climatic conditions. It is widely known that a plethora of microorganisms inhabit mires due to the regular supply of water and abundance of peat forming vegetation. These microorganisms include but are not limited to methanogens, algae, bacteria, zoobenthos, of which Sphagnum species are most abundant. The peat in mires contain a substantial amount of organic matter, where humic acid dominates. Humic materials are able to store very large amounts of water, making them an essential component in the peat environment, contributing to an increased amount of carbon storage due to the resulting anaerobic condition. If the peatland is dried from long-term cultivation and agricultural use, it will lower the water table and the increased aeration will subsequently release carbon content. Upon extreme drying, the ecosystem can undergo a state shift, turning the mire into a barren land with lower biodiversity and richness. The formation of humic acid occurs during the biogeochemical degradation of vegetation debris, animal residue, and degraded segments. The loads of organic matter in the form of humic acid is a source of precursors of coal. Prematurely exposing the organic matter to the atmosphere promotes the conversion of organics to carbon dioxide to be released in the atmosphere.

Impacts on climate change
Wetlands provide an environment where organic carbon is stored in living plants, dead plants and peat, as well as converted to carbon dioxide and methane. Microbial activity is promoted by the large amounts of dissolved organic matter in wetlands, containing 45-50% carbon. Mineralization through bacterial oxidation converts this carbon to inorganic substances, allowing carbon storage to occur. Three main factors giving wetlands the ability to sequester and store carbon are the high biological productivity, high water table and low decomposition rates. Suitable meteorological and hydrological conditions are necessary to provide an abundant water source for the wetland. Fully water-saturated wetland soils allow anaerobic conditions to manifest, storing carbon but releasing methane. Wetlands make up about 5-8% of Earth’s terrestrial land surface but contain about 20-30% of the planet’s 2500 Pg soil carbon stores. Mires, as well as bogs, fens and marshes are the wetland types that contain the highest amounts of soil organic carbon, and can thus be considered peatlands. Wetlands can become sources of carbon, rather than sinks, as the decomposition occurring within the ecosystem emits methane. Natural peatlands do not have a measurable cooling effect on the climate in a short time span as the cooling effects of sequestering carbon are offset by the emission of methane, which induces warming. Despite this, peatlands do result in cooling of the Earth's climate over a longer time period as methane is oxidized quickly and removed from the atmosphere whereas atmospheric carbon dioxide is continuously absorbed. However, in the paper ‘Wetlands, carbon and climate change’ by Mitsch et al., it was determined “that methane emissions become unimportant within 300 years compared to carbon sequestration in wetlands. Within that time frame or less, most wetlands become both net carbon and radiative sinks.” Peatlands insulate the permafrost in subarctic regions, thus delaying thawing during summer, as well as inducing the formation of permafrost. As the global climate continues to warm, wetlands could become major carbon sources as higher temperatures cause higher carbon dioxide emissions. Compared with untilled cropland, wetlands can sequester around two times the carbon, and planted wetlands may be able to store 2-15 times more carbon than what they release. Carbon sequestration can occur in constructed wetlands, as well as natural ones. Estimates of greenhouse gas fluxes from wetlands indicate that natural wetlands have lower fluxes, but man-made wetlands have a greater carbon sequestration capacity. The carbon sequestration abilities of wetlands can be improved through restoration and protection strategies, but it takes several decades for these restored ecosystems to become comparable in carbon storage to peatlands and other forms of natural wetlands.

Impacts on society, agriculture, and industries
Tropical peatlands comprise 0.25% of Earth’s terrestrial land surface but store 3% of all soil and forest carbon stocks and are mostly located in developing countries. The exploitation of these ecosystems, such as the draining and harvesting of tropical peat forests, releases a large amount of carbon dioxide. In addition, fires caused by dry peat due to the draining of peat bogs releases even more carbon dioxide. The economic value of a tropical peatland used to be derived from raw materials, such as wood, bark, resin, and latex; the extraction of which did not release carbon emissions. Today, many of these ecosystems are drained for conversion to palm oil plantations, releasing the stored carbon dioxide and preventing the system from sequestering carbon again. The planned [https://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/geography? Carbopeat Project] will attempt to assign economic value to the carbon sequestration performed by peat bogs to stop the exploitation of these ecosystems.