Conveners
Deilson Alves
Universidade Federal dos Vales do Jequitinhonha e Mucuri
Brazil
Session Description
The session aims to address scientific results related to peatlands. Peatland ecosystems are still little known in Brazil, but they provide ecosystem services (water storage, carbon sequestration, preservation of landmarks of paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental changes, among others) and have peculiar biodiversity, which are of extreme local, regional and global.
Peatlands are transitional ecosystems between terrestrial and aquatic environments, formed by the accumulation in time and space of plant tissues in conditions of excessive humidity, low availability of nutrients, low pH, and scarcity of oxygen, where organic matter goes through processes of slow humification/mineralization. Most of the planet's peatland ecosystems occur in boreal and temperate regions (75 to 80%) and only 10 to 15% are located in tropical regions.
In addition to the scenic beauty, several works have proven the exceptionality of these ecosystems, for maintaining local and regional biodiversity, as regulators of water quality and quantity (with properties comparable to aquifers), as carbon sequestrants, contributing to minimizing global warming and as archives of paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental changes.
Therefore, it is necessary to implement PELD sites (Long Term Ecological Research) on peatlands to address scientific results and disseminate them at events such as ILTER OSM, aiming to show the importance of ecosystem services and biodiversity of peatlands both locally and worldwide and to popularize the great contribution of peatlands to humans and animals. The goal of the session is to disseminate as many scientific results of international relevance on peatlands in The International Long Term Ecological Research Network 3rd Open Science Meeting to be held in Xishuangbanna, China.
Session Justification
The scientific results of research related to peatlands are linked to the context and have a direct relationship with the OSM, as research on the subject of peatlands encompasses Long-Term Ecological Research. As possible scientific results to be disclosed in this proposed session, we can mention the sensitivity, mechanisms and adaptation of biodiversity to climate change; ecosystem management; socio-ecological resilience against external shocks and anthropization; new technologies and infrastructures for ecosystem research and application of ILTER science to environmental issues.
One Sentence Session Summary
Peatlands: Ecosystem services, biotic interactions and paleoenvironments