Open AccessPeat‐based climate reconstructions run into murky waters?
Author(s) -
Bhattacharya Atreyee
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
eos, transactions american geophysical union
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.316
H-Index - 86
eISSN - 2324-9250
pISSN - 0096-3941
DOI - 10.1029/2012eo300026
Subject(s) - peat , water table , climate change , holocene , environmental science , ecosystem , physical geography , table (database) , period (music) , rainwater harvesting , hydrology (agriculture) , earth science , geology , geography , ecology , oceanography , groundwater , archaeology , biology , physics , geotechnical engineering , computer science , acoustics , data mining
Peatlands are globally important ecosystems that serve as archives of past environmental change. Peatlands form over thousands of years from the accumulation of decaying plants and hold water, or in some cases, purely rainwater. Therefore, external processes, such as climate, as well as internal processes, such as the rates of peat growth and decay, control the water table in peatlands. However, throughout the previous century and particularly over the past decade, paleoclimatologists have increasingly relied on reconstructions of the water table in rain‐fed peatlands to infer changes in rainfall through the Holocene period (the past ∼12,000 years), ignoring the potentially important role of internal processes.