Abstract
Terrestrial wetlands are a highly significant carbon reservoir in North
America. Forested wetlands, or swamps, are an important category of
North American wetland and include boreal forested peatlands, swamps
dominated by needle-leaved trees including Thuja (cedar), Picea
(Spruce), Larix (Tamarack) or Taxodium (bald cypress), swamps dominated
by broad-leaved trees or shrubs including Fraxinus (Ash), Ulmus (Elm),
or Acer (Maple), as well as mangroves. The Second State of the Carbon
Cycle Report estimates that forested wetlands may make up
~55% of the total terrestrial wetland area for North
America, although estimates vary considerably due to different mapping
conventions and classification systems across national and provincial
borders, and also due to the ongoing impacts of land use change.
Additionally, that report suggests that forested wetlands contain larger
total carbon pools than non-forested wetlands, and that forested
wetlands effect 53% of the estimated 123 Tg total wetland annual carbon
sink for North America. Uncertainties in the sizes of the forested
wetland soil carbon pools continue to be significant due in part to
insufficient data on variabilities in carbon densities across diverse
swamp types. Further, there are limited data on the rates of vertical
accretion of swamp soils and the associated long-term rates of carbon
accumulation, needed for better predicting impacts of climate warming on
carbon sequestration in swamp soils. We present here a comparative
synthesis of swamp soil carbon properties including bulk densities,
organic carbon contents, soil thicknesses, rates of vertical accretion
and rates of long-term carbon accumulation, from >200 swamp
sites. We compare these properties for broad-leaf swamps (including
mangroves), needle-leaf swamps, mixed swamps, and shrub-dominated
swamps, and also compare across North American Ecoregions. The results
show significant variability across peat-forming and mineral swamps, and
indicate rates of carbon accumulation in some swamp types similar to
those of northern bogs and fens.