PDK Projects, Inc. is pleased to announce expansion of its environmental monitoring capabilities into the monitoring of peatlands.  For the first time in Canada, the rapid, flexible analytical technique of near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) will be applied for monitoring of carbon and moisture levels in Canada’s peatlands in the context of climate change.  With climate warming over the past decades, the natural incidence of boreal forest and associated peat fires has been increasing.  Most of the peat fires are limited in size and duration by cold, wet soil conditions.  Nevertheless, as soils continue to become drier and water tables fall, the risk of major, intractable peat fires increases.  Monitoring moisture in peatlands can allow better targeting of fire surveillance efforts.  More detailed information on the geographical distribution of the masses of carbon stored in peat can assist in planning fire responses by agencies and communities.  Recently, scientists have recognized that peat fires are hazardous in other ways than releasing carbon. Northern peatlands are storage areas for natural and anthropogenic mercury.  Evidence suggests peat fires release 15 times the quantities of mercury previously thought.  This can exacerbate mercury toxicities in northern food chains. 

Peatlands represent a major store of the world’s land-based carbon.  They cover an estimated 3 - 4% of the earth’s land and store 25% of the world’s terrestrial carbon, equivalent in amount to about 75% of the total carbon in the global atmosphere. The fate of peatlands on the globe can, therefore, influence concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere.  In Canada, peatlands occupy 1,113,000 km2, more than 12.3% of the country’s surface area and contain over 150 Giga tonnes of carbon or about 60% of Canada’s carbon stock.  

Near-infrared spectroscopy is used globally for the analysis of composition and functionality of organic commodities, such as food, feeds, pharmaceuticals, textiles, and petroleum hydrocarbons.  It utilizes the absorption of light by samples in the wavelength region, 700 to 2500 nm, to determine their composition and properties.  The technology differs from most chemical analytical techniques in that it analyzes samples very quickly and non-destructively.  Samples can be analyzed during a process, on a moving belt, in the laboratory, the clinic, or in the field.  It is safe for living organisms.  PDK Projects, Inc. has explored a number of environmental applications of NIRS, such as for analysis of nutrients in biowastes, carbon in marsh soils, and phosphorus in lake sediments.

The technology can contribute uniquely to a peatland monitoring program by providing time-saving, cost-effective analysis of numerous constituents in the large numbers of samples that will be generated in a geographically-broad study. Scientists in Britain and Sweden have used NIRS to measure moisture content, carbon, cellulose, nitrogen, bulk density, gross heat content, degree of humification, and the amounts of several species of peat mosses in local peat.  Even the amount of methane produced by living peat samples has been determined using NIRS.  Near-infrared spectroscopy can be a significant tool in making climate change monitoring of these vast carbon reserves in Canada more economically and logistically feasible.