PROTECTING PEATLANDS USING SATELLITE ENABLED IOT


Peatlands are a vital part of the planet’s environment and play a major role in locking up CO2. However, extensive exploitation has seen these valuable ecosystems damaged. Here, Telemaco Melia, Managing Director of EchoStar Mobile, discusses the importance of peatlands and considers how satellite enabled IoT can help bring them back to full health.


As the world gears up to mitigate climate change by reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the role of natural ecosystems in helping absorb GHGs is becoming increasingly recognized. The protection of these ecosystems is thus becoming a priority.


Just such an ecosystem is peatlands, a unique environment that forms on peat, which itself is a type of soil that develops in waterlogged conditions. These conditions mean that dead plants such as moss cannot rot. The live mosses that grow on peatlands act as sponges, absorbing and holding in water and maintaining the wet conditions of the peat.


Peatlands can be found across the world, from arctic latitudes and high altitudes, to beneath the canopies of tropical rainforests and also in arboreal forests. They are important habitats for many species of rare plants, birds and insects and as such play a major role in maintaining biodiversity.


They are also signifi cant carbon stores. Although peatlands cover only around 3% of the world’s land surface, they are estimated to contain around a quarter of the globe’s soil carbon, some 600 gigatonnes, more than in all the world’s forests.


As well as this, they help mitigate fl ood risks and contribute to the availability of fresh drinking water.


Their importance to the global ecosystem has only been recognized relatively recently and much damage has already been done. Primarily, peatlands are drained for agriculture and forestry and extracted for horticulture and energy. For example, in the UK, at least 80% of peatland habitats have been lost or damaged. As they dry out, peatlands lose their ability to retain carbon dioxide. The CO2 emissions from drained or burned peatlands is estimated to be in the order of two billion tonnes a year.


Although clearly vital to the health of the planet’s ecosystem, peatlands remain little understood, mainly due to the limited research undertaken into their extent, status and how they change.


Measure to manage


It is clear that peatlands need to be managed more sustainably if they are to continue to contribute the extensive ecological benefi ts they can offer. However, to manage them we need to know more about them – how they are developing, what parameters are changing, how quickly, in what areas and over what extent.


Peatlands can be assessed through ground monitoring or via remote sensing methods. Remote sensing encompasses techniques such as LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), synthetic aperture radar and high resolution optical imagery obtained from orbiting satellites. The fi rst two methods are often prohibitively expensive and satellite methods also require some time and skill to interpret the imagery.


Satellite monitoring methods also face major challenges. Among these is the fact that peatlands are affected by many complex factors, including the topography of the land, the texture of the peat, local usage patterns and the incidence of fi re.


Optical Earth observation of forest peatlands can also be affected by cloud cover and the density of the forest canopy, while radar methods, although they can penetrate cloud cover, suffer from noise caused by surface vegetation.


This means that satellite surveillance must still be backed up by ground observations and fi eld measurements.


Fortunately, some of the major types of information we need about peatlands can be obtained through relatively inexpensive ground monitoring techniques. Some of the major parameters that tell us about the health of peatlands are the degree of subsidence, the depth of the water table and the amount of greenhouse gas emissions.


Subsidence is typically measured via subsidence poles, which are simply poles made from a durable substance such as PVC. These are inserted into the mineral substrate underlying the peat to maintain stability. A free moving PVC collar is place over the pole, allowing a fi xed recording of the height of the peat surface. This collar needs to be heavy enough not to fl oat when fl ooded but light enough not to sink into the peat itself. Avoiding disturbance of the peat around the pole sites during installation is vital to prevent inaccurate measurements.


The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) has recommended the installation of at least one and preferably two subsidence poles for every 240 hectares of oil palm plantations on peatlands. Poles need to be placed across a range of representative land use types, with a higher density of poles required for peatlands with a variety of peat types, depth and drainage conditions. The RSPO recommends that peat surface elevation be recorded at least every quarter to capture seasonal


variations, with measurements conducted over at least three years to provide reliable subsidence data. [1]


Water table depth is measured via dipwells. These are simply constructed from PVC tubes inserted into the peat to enable the measurement of the water-table depth below the surface. The depth to the water table is monitored by measuring the distance from the water table in the dipwell to the top of the dipwell.


Determining the rate of GHG emissions is achieved using fl ux towers, which collect data on the exchange of carbon dioxide between the earth and the atmosphere, particularly CO2.


Automation gives better data


Gaining suffi cient data on the subsidence experienced by peatland or on the changes in water level is a challenge, particularly where the peatlands extend over a large area. Peat surfaces can change dramatically, making it advisable to capture data frequently.


However, this is not always possible. Peatlands can be in remote or diffi cult to access areas, making manual collection of data often unfeasible. With limited human resources, an organization charged with monitoring peat conditions may fi nd it cannot gather enough data at the required frequencies. There is also the issue of manual visits resulting in damage to the peatlands through increased footfall.


These issues can be mitigated by automating the collection of data, allowing more frequent collection and thus improving the quality and utility of the dataset, while avoiding disturbance to the peatland’s delicate ecosystem.


IET NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2022


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