Strategic restoration of global inland peatlands can maximize local and global co-benefits.

Authors

Emily A Ury, Zhen Zhang, Etienne Fluet-Chouinard, Stavroula S Sartzetakis, Tianyi Sun, Brian Buma

Published in

Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America. Volume 36. Issue 6. Pages e70300.

Abstract

Global-scale peatland restoration holds large potential for carbon sequestration; however, the peatland carbon balance is not often considered alongside co-benefits in restoration prioritization. Here, we present a spatial optimization framework for inland peatland restoration to minimize greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and maximize peatland co-benefits, such as flood mitigation and water quality improvements. We find strategic restoration of 30% of the world's drained inland peatlands, targeting areas with the greatest potential for GHG emissions reductions, would sequester three times more GHGs (0.91 ± 0.17 Pg CO₂eq. year^-1) than the same magnitude of peatland restoration implemented randomly (0.27 ± 0.11 Pg CO₂eq. year^-1). Peatland restoration is often driven by local needs for the many ecosystem services that peatlands provide; therefore, we also quantify the GHG balance of restoration aimed at delivering either water quality improvements or flood mitigation. Meeting a 30% global inland peatland restoration target while prioritizing water quality improvements or flood mitigation can still achieve emissions reductions of 0.34 ± 0.14 and 0.50 ± 0.19 Pg CO₂eq. year^-1 (62% and 44% less emissions reductions than prioritizing emissions alone), respectively, demonstrating opportunities for overlap between global GHG budgets and local environmental objectives. Finally, we use future methane (CH₄) emissions projections to evaluate the compatibility of peatland restoration prioritization schemes with future CH₄ emissions. We find that priority regions for near-term GHG emissions reduction do not necessarily align with areas that would minimize future peatland CH₄ emissions, due to increasing CH₄ emissions by 2100. We account for uncertainty and variability in long-term emission trajectories of peatland restoration from diverse settings, site histories, and practices by testing our optimization framework with two alternate endpoint scenarios: "recently rewetted" and "restored to intact conditions." Our framework highlights numerous opportunities for inland peatland restoration to simultaneously achieve both near- and long-term emission reductions as well as multiple co-benefits. Broad-scale restoration strategies can be employed in concert with planning for regional needs and site-specific criteria to magnify the benefits of peatland restoration.

PMID:
42706932
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 08 Sep 2026.

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