Quantification and mapping of carbon stocks in wetlands from southern Quebec, Canada

Wetlands provide essential ecosystem services, including atmospheric carbon sequestration. In the context of climate change, these ecosystems offer a natural solution to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. Unlike many European or tropical regions, Quebec and Canada still maintain vast carbon stocks that are largely unaffected by anthropogenic pressures. The conservation of these stocks acts as nature-based climate solution to mitigate climate change.

This project aims to document the distribution and quantify the carbon stored in southern Quebec’s wetlands that span over 75,000 km²and covering 9 different ecoregions. The study implies the development of a new dataset on peat depth, compiling over 40,000 data across marshes, swamps, fens, bogs, and forested peatlands. Using this database, we will compare three modeling approaches (Random Forest, LightGBM, and Generalized Additive Models [GAMs]) to identify the most important predictors of carbon storage. These models integrate the new peat depth dataset, some topographic indices derived from a DEM and reconstructed paleoclimatic data.

Furthermore, the study will explain how topographic and past climatic conditions influenced carbon distribution and composition across different wetland types. The results of this research will be synthesized into a map that will support decision for wetland conservation and management strategies, as well as for assessing carbon losses due to the alteration or destruction of some of these ecosystems. This project specifically focuses on identifying carbon hot spots, the areas with the largest carbon stocks, to prioritize their conservation.