Maps of northern peatland extent, depth, carbon storage and nitrogen storage

Gustaf Hugelius, Julie Loisel, Sarah Chadburn, Robert B. Jackson, Miriam Jones, Glen MacDonald, Maija Marushchak, David Olefeldt, Maara Packalen, Matthias B. Siewert, Claire Treat, Merritt Turetsky, Carolina Voigt, Zicheng Yu

This dataset contains GIS grids of peatland properties for the full northern hemisphere, north of 23° N. The files include peatland extent, permafrost extent, peat depth, peat carbon storage, peat nitrogen storage and approximate extent of ombrotrophic/minerotrophic peatlands.

Northern peatlands are important components in the Earth system and interact with both biogeochemical and hydrological cycles. These grids can be used for broad-scale analyzes of peatland properties and processes or to support development and validation of peatlands in models.

The maps are based on a combination of reformatted northern hemisphere soil maps and spatial modelling. The maps of peatland extent (including different peatland types) are based on combinations of different harmonized local and regional maps. The peat depth maps were generated using random forest modelling from >7000 peat cores combined with environmental support data. The storage of carbon and nitrogen in peatlands was estimated from peat depth.

Citation

Gustaf Hugelius, Julie Loisel, Sarah Chadburn, Robert B. Jackson, Miriam Jones, Glen MacDonald, Maija Marushchak, David Olefeldt, Maara Packalen, Matthias B. Siewert, Claire Treat, Merritt Turetsky, Carolina Voigt, Zicheng Yu (2020) Maps of northern peatland extent, depth, carbon storage and nitrogen storage. Dataset version 1. Bolin Centre Database. https://doi.org/10.17043/hugelius-2020-peatland-1

References

Gustaf Hugelius, Julie Loisel, Sarah Chadburn, Robert B. Jackson, Miriam Jones, Glen MacDonald, Maija Marushchak, David Olefeldt, Maara Packalen, Matthias B. Siewert, Claire Treat, Merritt Turetsky, Carolina Voigt and Zicheng Yu (2020) Large stocks of peatland carbon and nitrogen are vulnerable to permafrost thaw. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1916387117

Data description

The dataset contains GIS-files in the grid (raster) format. Each grid consists of a GeoTiff file bundle with tif, cpg, dbf, xml and tfw-files. The grids store integer data and are in 10 km pixel resolution projected in the World Azimuthal Equidistant projection. The definitions of peatland types and classes follows the US Soil Taxonomy, for further decsription of definitions and methods we refer to Hugelius et al. (2020). Below, a brief description of each file is included (in alphabetic order):

• Histel_fraction: This file shows the estimated coverage in percent of permafrost peatlands (Histels) in each gridcell.

• Histel_minerotrophic: This file shows the percent of Histel peatlands that is expected to be minerotrophic in a given region (together with Histel_ombrotrophic it should add up to 100%). Note that this data is highly generalized and is not suitable for analyses at finer scales. This file has coverage everywhere, including where there are no peatlands. This is because it is scaled, and extrapolated, based on generalized biome distribution maps.

• Histel_ombrotrophic: This file shows the percent of Histel peatlands that is expected to be ombrotrophic in a given region (together with Histel_minerotrophic it should add up to 100%). Note that this data is highly generalized and is not suitable for analyses at finer scales. This file has coverage everywhere, including where there are no peatlands. This is because it is scaled, and extrapolated, based on generalized biome distribution maps.

• Histel_SOC_hg_per_sqm: This file shows estimated storage of organic carbon in peat of Histel peatlands (unit is hg m⁻²).

• Histel_TN_gram_per_sqm: This file shows estimated storage of total nitrogen in peat of Histel peatlands (unit is gram m⁻²).

• Histosol_fraction: This file shows the estimated coverage in percent of non-permafrost peatlands (Histosols) in each gridcell.

• Histosol_minerotrophic: This file shows the percent of Histosol peatlands that is expected to be minerotrophic in a given region (together with Histosol_ombrotrophic it should add up to 100%). Note that this data is highly generalized and is not suitable for analyses at finer scales. This file has coverage everywhere, including where there are no peatlands. This is because it is scaled, and extrapolated, based on generalized biome distribution maps.

• Histosol_ombrotrophic: This file shows the percent of Histosol peatlands that is expected to be ombrotrophic in a given region (together with Histosol_minerotrophic it should add up to 100%). Note that this data is highly generalized and is not suitable for analyses at finer scales. This file has coverage everywhere, including where there are no peatlands. This is because it is scaled, and extrapolated, based on generalized biome distribution maps.

• Histosol_SOC_hg_per_sqm: This file shows estimated storage of organic carbon in peat of Histosol peatlands (unit is hg m⁻²).

• Histosol_TN_gram_per_sqm: This file shows estimated storage of total nitrogen in peat of Histosol peatlands (unit is gram m⁻²).

• Mean_potential_peat_depth_cm: This file shows the estimated potential depth of peatlands in all locations (generated using peat cores and machine learning). This file was combined with the peatland extent maps to estimate storage (per square meter) and total stock of carbon and nitrogen in peatlands.

The total size of all files is 9.2 MB.