title: An expert system model for mapping tropical wetlands and peatlands reveals South America as the largest contributor.
abstract: Wetlands are important providers of ecosystem services and key regulators of climate change. They positively contribute to global warming through their greenhouse gas emissions, and negatively through the accumulation of organic material in histosols, particularly in peatlands. Our understanding of wetlands' services is currently constrained by limited knowledge on their distribution, extent, volume, interannual flood variability and disturbance levels. We present an expert system approach to estimate wetland and peatland areas, depths and volumes, which relies on three biophysical indices related to wetland and peat formation: (1) long-term water supply exceeding atmospheric water demand; (2) annually or seasonally water-logged soils; and (3) a geomorphological position where water is supplied and retained. Tropical and subtropical wetlands estimates reach 4.7 million km2(Mkm2). In line with current understanding, the American continent is the major contributor (45%), and Brazil, with its Amazonian interfluvial region, contains the largest tropical wetland area (800,720 km2). Our model suggests, however, unprecedented extents and volumes of peatland in the tropics (1.7 Mkm2and 7,268 (6,076-7,368) km3), which more than threefold current estimates. Unlike current understanding, our estimates suggest that South America and not Asia contributes the most to tropical peatland area and volume (ca. 44% for both) partly related to some yet unaccounted extended deep deposits but mainly to extended but shallow peat in the Amazon Basin. Brazil leads the peatland area and volume contribution. Asia hosts 38% of both tropical peat area and volume with Indonesia as the main regional contributor and still the holder of the deepest and most extended peat areas in the tropics. Africa hosts more peat than previously reported but climatic and topographic contexts leave it as the least peat-forming continent. Our results suggest large biases in our current understanding of the distribution, area and volumes of tropical peat and their continental contributions.
authors.affiliation: Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), Bogor, Indonesia.|Karttur AB, Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Gumbricht
authors.affiliation: Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), Bogor, Indonesia.|Laboratory of Geo-Information Science and Remote Sensing, Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Rosa Maria
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-6945-8402
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Roman-Cuesta
authors.affiliation: International Center for Tropical Agriculture, Cali, Colombia.|Earth Institute Center for Environmental Sustainability, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Louis
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Verchot
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Geo-Information Science and Remote Sensing, Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Herold
authors.affiliation: Department of Wetland Ecology, Institute for Geography and Geoecology, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology-KIT, Rastatt, Germany.
authors.forename: Florian
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Wittmann
authors.affiliation: Department of Wetland Ecology, Institute for Geography and Geoecology, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology-KIT, Rastatt, Germany.
authors.forename: Ethan
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Householder
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Geo-Information Science and Remote Sensing, Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Nadine
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Herold
authors.affiliation: Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), Bogor, Indonesia.|Department of Geophysics and Meteorology, Bogor Agricultural University, Bogor, Indonesia.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Murdiyarso
mesh_terms: D000349:Africa; D001208:Asia; D001938:Brazil; D057231:Climate Change; D005103:Expert Systems; D007214:Indonesia; D053833:Wetlands
keywords: climate change; land use; peatlands; tropics; wetlands