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Title: Representing northern peatland microtopography and hydrology within the Community Land Model

Journal Article · · Biogeosciences Discussions (Online)
 [1];  [1];  [1];  [1];  [1];  [2];  [1];  [3]
  1. Oak Ridge National Lab., Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
  2. USDA Forest Service, Grand Rapids, MN (United States). Northern Research Station
  3. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab., CA (United States)

Predictive understanding of northern peatland hydrology is a necessary precursor to understanding the fate of massive carbon stores in these systems under the influence of present and future climate change. Current models have begun to address microtopographic controls on peatland hydrology, but none have included a prognostic calculation of peatland water table depth for a vegetated wetland, independent of prescribed regional water tables. We introduce here a new configuration of the Community Land Model (CLM) which includes a fully prognostic water table calculation for a vegetated peatland. Our structural and process changes to CLM focus on modifications needed to represent the hydrologic cycle of bogs environment with perched water tables, as well as distinct hydrologic dynamics and vegetation communities of the raised hummock and sunken hollow microtopography characteristic of peatland bogs. The modified model was parameterized and independently evaluated against observations from an ombrotrophic raised-dome bog in northern Minnesota (S1-Bog), the site for the Spruce and Peatland Responses Under Climatic and Environmental Change experiment (SPRUCE). Simulated water table levels compared well with site-level observations. The new model predicts significant hydrologic changes in response to planned warming at the SPRUCE site. At present, standing water is commonly observed in bog hollows after large rainfall events during the growing season, but simulations suggest a sharp decrease in water table levels due to increased evapotranspiration under the most extreme warming level, nearly eliminating the occurrence of standing water in the growing season. Simulated soil energy balance was strongly influenced by reduced winter snowpack under warming simulations, with the warming influence on soil temperature partly offset by the loss of insulating snowpack in early and late winter. The new model provides improved predictive capacity for seasonal hydrological dynamics in northern peatlands, and provides a useful foundation for investigation of northern peatland carbon exchange.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC05-00OR22725
OSTI ID:
1209488
Journal Information:
Biogeosciences Discussions (Online), Vol. 12, Issue 4; ISSN 1810-6285
Publisher:
European Geosciences UnionCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Cited By (13)

Intermediate-scale community-level flux of CO2 and CH4 in a Minnesota peatland: putting the SPRUCE project in a global context journal August 2016
Assessing runoff generation in riparian wetlands: monitoring groundwater–surface water dynamics at the micro-catchment scale journal January 2019
Subsidence and carbon dioxide emissions in a smallholder peatland mosaic in Sumatra, Indonesia journal March 2018
Fine-root growth in a forested bog is seasonally dynamic, but shallowly distributed in nutrient-poor peat journal March 2017
Dynamic Vertical Profiles of Peat Porewater Chemistry in a Northern Peatland journal October 2016
Global wetland contribution to 2000–2012 atmospheric methane growth rate dynamics journal September 2017
Assessing the Value of UAV Photogrammetry for Characterizing Terrain in Complex Peatlands journal July 2017
Attaining whole-ecosystem warming using air and deep-soil heating methods with an elevated CO 2 atmosphere journal January 2017
Implementing northern peatlands in a global land surface model: description and evaluation in the ORCHIDEE high-latitude version model (ORC-HL-PEAT) journal January 2018
ORCHIDEE-PEAT (revision 4596), a model for northern peatland CO2, water, and energy fluxes on daily to annual scales journal January 2018
Global wetland contribution to 2000–2012 atmospheric methane growth rate dynamics text January 2017
ORCHIDEE-PEAT (revision 4596), a model for northern peatland CO2, water, and energy fluxes on daily to annual scales text January 2018
PEAT-CLSM: A Specific Treatment of Peatland Hydrology in the NASA Catchment Land Surface Model text January 2019

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