Climate change puts the world’s largest terrestrial carbon store at greater risk | 24CA News

In current years, Sam Hunter has observed a distinction within the peatland surrounding his group in northern Ontario.

“I remember two years ago we built a fire while we were fishing on top of the snow, and then I noticed that we had to pour water on that fire,” he mentioned.

“Even though it was winter, there was a lot of snow and it was still burning two days later.”

Hunter is from the Cree group of Peawanuck, nestled alongside the Winisk River south of Hudson Bay. He’s the pure useful resource monitor locally, which sits to this point north it’s surrounded by peatlands — a sort of wetland the place waterlogged circumstances stop vegetation from totally decomposing.

By definition, peatlands are moist environments, however a warming local weather has meant they generally get dry sufficient for fires to take maintain.

“When it burns in the summer, it just burns right down until there’s nothing left. It will just keep on burning,” Hunter mentioned.

Because peatlands include a lot plant materials, they’re large carbon sinks — pure or synthetic sources that take up extra carbon from the environment than they launch.

Carbon sinks can even embrace forests, the ocean and soil; they differ from carbon sources, such because the burning of fossil fuels that launch carbon dioxide (which may heat the planet, contributing to local weather change) into the environment. 

The International Union for Conservation of Nature says peatlands make up the world’s largest pure terrestrial carbon retailer.

A ‘peatland superpower’

Sarah Finkelstein is a professor with the University of Toronto’s division of earth sciences and works intently with Indigenous communities in Ontario’s far north to higher perceive peatlands.

Finkelstein calls Canada a “peatland superpower” as a result of the distinctive wetlands cowl over 1 million sq. kilometres of the nation’s landmass.

“They’re a very important part of our landscape and the history of our landscape,” she mentioned.

Part of Finkelstein’s analysis is wanting again greater than 10,000 years in the past, when the final ice age resulted in what’s now Canada, and the way peatlands have modified.

“We can collect core samples of that mud and actually understand something about the history of those environments, like climate history, vegetation change, the impacts of disturbance,” she mentioned.

Finkelstein mentioned peatland fires did occur naturally earlier than people began burning fossil fuels, however they have been a once-in-a-century occasion.

“When the water table drops because you’ve got a hot summer, for example, that’s when these peatlands can be vulnerable to wildfire,” she mentioned.

“So it certainly occurs naturally, but the number of fires has been increasing in recent years, and the severity of those fires as well. And it’s pretty unusual to see.”

Fort Albany forest hearth

In June, Fort Albany First Nation was evacuated as a result of wildfires.

The Cree group is close to the James Bay coast and surrounded by the boreal forest and peatlands.

Community members shared photographs and movies on social media of large smoke plumes above the forest’s edge, with the low-lying peatlands close by.

Finkelstein mentioned whereas the altering local weather poses a risk to peatlands, they’re resilient ecosystems.

Most of Ontario’s peatlands are nonetheless intact, significantly across the Hudson and James Bay lowlands, she mentioned.

But for that setting, and large carbon sink, to remain intact, it must be shielded from improvement and drainage, Finkelstein added.