Peatlands develop in specific hydrological settings and react sensitively to changes in climatic and hydrological boundary conditions. The hydrology of peatlands is fundamental to their function and development. Soil hydrological properties can change drastically after human interventions such as drainage, causing challenges for both model parameterisation and re-wetting measures. Pristine peatlands offer and regulate a number of ecosystem services such as biodiversity, carbon storage and nutrient retention. Hydrology is a key control for a number of these services but studies on peatland hydrology are surprisingly scarce. Furthermore, the effects of peatlands (both pristine and disturbed) on flood retention and on regional climate are much debated, but there seem to be more myths than data. As hydrological and biotic processes in peatlands are strongly coupled, estimating the eco-hydrological response of peatlands under climate change and linking it to vegetation development and greenhouse gas emissions is a demanding task for modellers.
This session aims to bring together peatland scientists to focus on improved understanding of hydrological processes operating in all types of peatlands. Peatlands being considered may be pristine or disturbed and degraded and may also include rehabilitation and re-wetting interventions. Hydrological data may have been collected for other reasons (e.g. carbon flux calculations) but the session welcomes re-examination of such hydrological data in its own right or as supporting data for other studies. All aspects of peatland hydrology are welcome to boost knowledge transfer across scales and methods; from the pore to the global scale, including laboratory, field, remote sensing and modelling studies on hydrological, hydrochemical or geophysical topics, as well as ecosystem service assessments.
Phase 1 (upload and posting/answering comments, starting now!):
- Authors are asked to upload their 'display' not later than 48 hours before the session chat!
Accepted formats are explained here:
https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2020/EGU2020-22697.html
https://www.egu2020.eu/
--> Choose the format that fits (i) your willingness to share unpublished work, and (ii) your constraints because of copyright concerns.
- Everybody is welcome to post questions/comments to contributions via the "post a comment" available for each display (unless authors deactivated that option). We encourage discussion before the session chat because many people will just not attend the chat because of different time zone.
- We ask all authors to reply to comments as much as you want.
IMPORTANT: Displays and comments/replies will be stored and publicly available on the platform forever!
Phase 2 (session chat, text-based only):
- Equality: We will offer each contribution the same amount of time (appr. 5 minutes) for discussion in a browser chat tool provided by the platform. If there are no more questions we will move to the next contribution, also when the 5 minutes are not over yet. A basic schedule will be announced depending on what has been uploaded 48 hours before the chat.
- We will collect unanswered comments from Phase 1 and further allow new questions coming in.
IMPORTANT: The session chat will be deleted at the end of the session chat. This is the same for all EGU sessions. Just the displays/comments/replies (Phase 1) will be stored and remain online forever.
One more note, especially addressed to young researchers! At EGU, we would meet in person after an oral presentation or in the poster hall. Don't hesitate to e-mail people and ask for a skype call as if you were live at EGU !!! Don't allow the physical distance as a hurdle for your scientific development. Our Earth faces big challenges, no need to waste time through inefficient scientific exchange!
best wishes and enjoy EGU20,
Michel Bechtold
Ullrich Dettmann
Joseph Holden
Bjørn Kløve
Marie Larocque