Search for a command to run...
<strong class="journal-contentHeaderColor">Abstract.</strong> Despite covering only 3 % of the planet’s land surface, peatlands store 30 % of the planet’s terrestrial carbon. The potential to both emit and drawdown CO<sub>2</sub> and CH<sub>4</sub>, means that peatlands have a complex and multifaceted relationship with the global climate system. The net GHG emissions from peatlands depends on many factors but primarily vegetation composition, ground water level and drainage, land management, and soil temperature. Many peatland models use surface water levels to estimate CH<sub>4</sub> exchange, neglecting to consider the efï¬ciency of CH<sub>4</sub> transported to the atmosphere by vegetation. To assess the impact of vegetation on the GHG ï¬uxes of peatlands, we have developed a new model, Peatland-VU-NUCOM (PVN). The new PVN model has been built from two parent models, the Peatland-VU and NUCOM-BOG models. To represent dynamic vegetation, we have introduced plant functional types and competition, adapted from the NUCOM-BOG model, into the Peatland-VU model. The PVN model includes plant competition, CH<sub>4</sub> diffusion, ebullition, root, shoot, litter, exudate production, below-ground decomposition, and above-ground moss development, under changing water levels and climatic conditions. PVN is a site-speciï¬c peatland CH<sub>4</sub> and CO<sub>2</sub> emissions model, able to reproduce vegetation dynamics. Here, we present the PVN model structure and explore the model’s sensitivity to environmental input data and the intro- duction of the new vegetation-competition schemes. We evaluate the model against observed chamber data collected at two peatland sites in the Netherlands to show that the model is able to reproduce realistic plant biomass fractions, and daily CH<sub>4</sub> and CO<sub>2</sub> ï¬uxes. We ï¬nd that this plot-scale model is ï¬exible and robust and suitable to be used to simulate vegetation dynamics and emissions of other peatland sites.