• DOI:10.1038/s41561-019-0462-z
• Corpus ID: 202908362

Widespread drying of European peatlands in recent centuries

@article{Swindles2019WidespreadDO,
  title={Widespread drying of European peatlands in recent centuries},
  author={Graeme T. Swindles and Paul J. Morris and Donal Mullan and Richard John Payne and Thomas P. Roland and Matthew J. Amesbury and Mariusz Lamentowicz and T. Edward Turner and Angela V. Gallego-Sala and Thomas G. Sim and Iestyn D. Barr and Maarten Blaauw and Antony Blundell and Frank M Chambers and Dan J. Charman and Angelica Feurdean and Jennifer M. Galloway and Mariusz Gałka and Sophie M. Green and Katarzyna Kajukało and Edgar Karofeld and Atte Korhola and Łukasz Lamentowicz and Peter G. Langdon and Katarzyna Marcisz and Dmitri Mauquoy and Yuri A. Mazei and M. Margaret Mckeown and Edward A. D. Mitchell and Elena Yu. Novenko and Gill Plunkett and Helen M. Roe and Kristian Schoning and {\"U}lle Sillasoo and Andrey N. Tsyganov and Marjolein van der Linden and Minna M V{\"a}liranta and Barry G. Warner},
  journal={Nature Geoscience},
  year={2019},
  pages={1-7}
}

• G. Swindles, P. Morris, +35 authors B. Warner
• Published 21 October 2019
• Environmental Science, Geography
• Nature Geoscience

Climate warming and human impacts are thought to be causing peatlands to dry, potentially converting them from sinks to sources of carbon. However, it is unclear whether the hydrological status of peatlands has moved beyond their natural envelope. Here we show that European peatlands have undergone substantial, widespread drying during the last ~300 years. We analyse testate amoeba-derived hydrological reconstructions from 31 peatlands across Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia and Continental Europe to examine changes in peatland surface wetness during the last 2,000 years. We find that 60% of our study sites were drier during the period 1800–2000 ce than they have been for the last 600 years, 40% of sites were drier than they have been for 1,000 years and 24% of sites were drier than they have been for 2,000 years. This marked recent transition in the hydrology of European peatlands is concurrent with compound pressures including climatic drying, warming and direct human impacts on peatlands, although these factors vary among regions and individual sites. Our results suggest that the wetness of many European peatlands may now be moving away from natural baselines. Our findings highlight the need for effective management and restoration of European peatlands.Pervasive drying over the last few centuries has reduced carbon storage in European peatlands, the result of climate change and human impacts, according to a continent-wide compilation of hydrological records derived from testate amoeba.