Discussed wood and "slash and burn." I discussed peat and the intensity of the carbon dioxide released from the burning of peat.
There was one site on Peat I didn't mention:
There was one site on Peat I didn't mention:
1. Peatlands (click here) cover an estimated area of 400 million ha, equivalent to 3% of the Earth’s land surface. Most (c. 350 million ha) are in the northern hemisphere, covering large areas in North America, Russia and Europe. Tropical peatlands occur in mainland East Asia, Southeast Asia, the Caribbean and Central America, South America and southern Africa where the current estimate of undisturbed peatland is 30-45 million ha or 10-12% of the global peatland resource.
2. Peatlands represent globally significant stores of soil C that have been accumulating for millennia and currently, peatlands globally represent a major store of soil carbon, sink for carbon dioxide and source of atmospheric methane. In general, nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions are low from natural peatlands but there is evidence that those used for agriculture are releasing significant amounts of this potent greenhouse gas. Losses of peatland C from storage result from changes in the balance between net exchange of CO2, emission of CH4, and hydrological losses of carbon (e.g. dissolved organic and inorganic C and particulate organic C). The greenhouse gas (GHG) balance of a peatland depends on relative rates of net CO2 uptake or effl ux and CH4 and N2O efflux....
