Recent climate change has driven divergent hydrological shifts in high-latitude peatlands.
Hui ZhangMinna M VälirantaGraeme T SwindlesMarco A Aquino-LópezDonal MullanNing TanMatthew AmesburyKirill V BabeshkoKunshan BaoAnatoly BobrovViktor ChernyshovMarissa A DaviesAndrei-Cosmin DiaconuAngelica FeurdeanSarah A FinkelsteinMichelle GarneauZhengtang GuoMiriam C JonesMartin KayEric S KleinMariusz LamentowiczGabriel MagnanKatarzyna MarciszNatalia MazeiYuri MazeiRichard PayneNicolas PelletierSanna R PiiloSteve PratteThomas P RolandDamir SaldaevWilliam ShotykThomas G SimThomas J SloanMichał SłowińskiJulie TalbotLiam TaylorAndrey N TsyganovSebastian WetterichWei XingYan ZhaoPublished in: Nature communications (2022)
High-latitude peatlands are changing rapidly in response to climate change, including permafrost thaw. Here, we reconstruct hydrological conditions since the seventeenth century using testate amoeba data from 103 high-latitude peat archives. We show that 54% of the peatlands have been drying and 32% have been wetting over this period, illustrating the complex ecohydrological dynamics of high latitude peatlands and their highly uncertain responses to a warming climate.