From pole to pole, peatlands contain up to 30% of the world’s soil carbon pool, illustrating their important role in regulating the global carbon cycle. Currently, peatlands are under various pressures such as a changing climate or nutrient loading with unknown consequences for their functioning as carbon sinks and stores, including the uptake or release of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O).

However, it is not clear how the carbon reservoir will react to these pressures and how vulnerable or resilient these ecosystems are. Tipping points, thresholds, and system state changes are often referred to in the literature, but how much do we really know about these in a peatland context? This session will focus on the observed or predicted changes on the biogeochemistry of natural peatlands, caused by external pressures such as climate change, fire or nutrient loading.

We invite studies concentrating, for example, on the effects of climate change, nutrient loading or fire on GHG or nutrient dynamics, peatland vegetation, atmosphere-biosphere interactions or carbon stock changes. Field observations, experimental, and modelling studies of both high- and low-latitude peatlands are welcomed.