Widespread carbon-dense peatlands in the Colombian lowlands.

Peatlands are some of the world’s most carbon-dense ecosystems and release substantial quantities of greenhouse gases when degraded. However, conserving peatlands in many tropical areas is challenging due to limited knowledge of their distribution. To address this, we surveyed soils and plant communities in Colombia’s eastern lowlands, where few peatlands have previously been described. We documented peat soils >40 cm thick at 51 of more than 100 surveyed wetlands. We use our data to update a regional peatland classification, which includes a new and possibly widespread peatland type, ‘the white-sand peatland,’ as well as two distinctive open-canopy sub-types. Analysis of peat bulk density and organic matter content from 39 intact peat cores indicates that the average per-area carbon densities of these sites (490–1230 Mg C ha , depending on type) is 4–10 times the typical carbon stock of a (non-peatland) Amazonian forest. We used remote sensing to upscale our observations, generating the first data-driven peatland map for the region. The total estimated carbon stock of these peatlands of 1.91 petagrams (Pg C) (2-sigma confidence interval, 0.60–4.22) approaches that of South America’s largest known peatland complex in the northern Peruvian Amazon, indicating that substantial peat carbon stores on the continent have yet to be documented. These observations indicate that tropical peatlands may be far more diverse in form and structure and broadly distributed than is widely understood, which could have important implications for tropical peatland conservation strategies.

Project(s)

Priority 4: Accelerated Taxonomy

Funder

Funder name	Awards
Natural Environment Research Council, United Kingdom	NE/V018760/1 - NE/V018760/2
H2020 European Research Council, European Union	865403
National Science Foundation, United States	2406964
Univerzita Karlova v Praze, Czechia	PRIMUS/23/SCI/013 - Charles University Research Centre program (UNCE/24/SCI/006) - OP JAK programme 'Natural and anthropogenic geohazards' (CZ.02.01.01/00/22_008/0004605)
King Center on Global Development, Stanford University, United States
Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur örderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung, Switzerland	190328
National Academy of Sciences, United States	NAS-PEER grant sub-award 2000012206
International Max Planck Research School for Global Biogeochemical Cycles, Germany