Widespread anthropogenic drainage & associated carbon fluxes in Southeast Asian peatlands

The Center for Climate Sciences (CCS) would like to invite you to attend the CCS Friday Seminar Series talk on Friday, May 1, 2020 from 9 am – 10:00 am via WebEx.

Speaker: Alexandra Konings

Affiliation: Stanford University

Date: Friday, May 1, 2020

Time: 9 am (WebEx)

Title: “Widespread anthropogenic drainage & associated carbon fluxes in Southeast Asian peatlands”

Abstract: In recent decades, peatlands in Insular South East Asian have undergone nearly ubiquitous land use change, mostly through agricultural conversion. Much of this conversion is associated with the digging of drainage canals, both to promote growth and as a means of transport. As a result of these changes, the region has developed into a major global hotspot of fires during dry El Nino years. This has significant implications for human health (in 2015, for example, an estimated 69 million people were exposed to unhealthy air quality due to Southeast Asian peat fires) and global carbon budgets (for example, the emissions of the 2015 fires are estimated to be equivalent to the 2013 fossil fuel emissions from India and Japan combined). In this talk, I will present two recent advances for understanding how changing hydrology is affecting the peatland ecosystems of Southeast Asia. First, we show that, contrary to conventional wisdom, L-band microwave remote sensing from SMAP is able to measure soil moisture in 85% of regional peatlands. The SMAP soil moisture correlates well with GFED burned area as much as 30 days in advance of fire, suggesting potential predictive capabilities for soil moisture in the region. This long lead time is 'hydrologically surprising', but is likely attributable to the effect of spatial variations in canal density. In the second half of the talk, I will discuss our use of Planet data to map drainage canals across Borneo and Sumatra for the first time. Canals are widespread in the region, with 80% of regional peatlands having been drained to some extent. Drainage density is also related to subsidence and associated CO2 emissions. I will conclude by discussing additional paths forward to improved understanding of the effect of anthropogenic drainage in the region.

About the speaker: Alexandra (Alex) Konings is an assistant professor in the department of Earth System Science at Stanford University. Her research group studies interactions between the carbon and water cycles at global scales. One of the major research themes in her group is the use of microwave remote sensing for understanding vegetation responses to water stress (particularly plant hydraulics). Additionally, her research groups has built on the CARDAMOM model-data fusion system in several ways. Both lines of research are linked by a focus on understanding and accounting for variations in vegetation behavior even within a given land cover type. After a PhD at MIT and a short postdoc at Columbia, Alex was a visiting postdoc in the JPL Carbon Cycle & Ecosystems group from March to August 2016. She has received the NASA New (Early Career) Investigator (2017) and NSF CAREER (2020) grants.

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CCS Friday Seminar Series

9:00 am