Research Highlights

Peatland Ecohydrology

Peatlands are incredible ecosystems in so many ways. They're beautiful ecosystems with some very unique ecological communities. A day spent in a peatland is always a good day! Most importantly they are carbon storage all-starts. Globally they store ~500 Gt of carbon, which is about 1/3 of the Earth's soil carbon stores, even though they only cover ~3% of the Earth's surface. They have some of the densest carbon stores of any ecosystem on the planet. They are able to store all of this carbon because of feedback mechanisms that keep them wet enough below the surface to prevent decomposition and combustion of dead plant matter, yet dry enough to maintain high levels of photosynthesis at the surface.

The interactions between peatland ecology and hydrology are fundamental to understanding how peatlands are such great carbon sinks and forms the basis for my research on peatland disturbances.

Peatland Wildfire

Peatlands experience many different natural and anthropogenic disturbances that can impact their ability to accumulate and store carbon. Although counterintuitive for a wetland ecosystem, the largest natural disturbance to peatlands in the Boreal is wildfire. My research focusses on predicting when peatlands are vulnerable to below ground smouldering and understanding the ecohydrological factors control peatland burn severity. 

This research involves monitoring and modelling peatland moisture and weather inputs across pristine, anthropogenically impacted (drained), and fuel treated peatlands to relate fire weather indices to smouldering vulnerability and find thresholds in commonly used fire weather metrics to peatland smouldering. 

Additionally I use field surveys and remote sensing to measure burn severity across various peatland ecosystem following natural and experimental fires.