THE CARBON SEQUESTRATION AND CLIMATE ADAPTATION BENEFITS OF REWETTING POCOSIN PEATLANDS IN POCOSIN LAKES NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, NORTH CAROLINA, USA

摘要

"Pocosins" are unique wetlands, also known as southeastern shrub bogs, which occur from southern Virginia to northern Florida along the southeastern USA Coastal Plain. Pocosins are characterized by a unique mixture of dense, broadleaf evergreen shrubs, cedars, and pond pines, as well as poorly-drained organic soils that stay saturated from fall to spring. Belowground, pocosins have low-nutrient, poorly-drained organic soils that stay seasonally saturated from fall to spring and release very few greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide and methane) into the atmosphere (Sharitz and Gibbons 1982; Bridgham and Richardson 1992). These conditions allow for the accretion of biomass and sequestration of carbon in the form of peat, making pocosins a carbon and nutrient sink when in a natural, un-drained state. The peat soils that underlie pocosins take thousands of years to develop. Soil cores from northeast North Carolina suggest that the deep, organic soil has been developing since the last Ice Age, 8,000-10,000 years before present (Daniel 1981). For example, recent site-specific measurements confirm soils at Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) are over 8,000 years old (Richardson pers. com). At Pocosin Lakes NWR the underlying peat depth typically exceeds 4-feet and exceeds 8-feet over large acreages (Daniel 1980, Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Inc. 1982; USFWS, 1990). Since it takes thousands of years to develop the peat soils and complimentary pocosin vegetative community, the only way to preserve these environs are to protect and/or restore the existing peat soil regions and pocosin habitat.