Here’s some general background information on the peatland carbon sequestration:

https://www.iucn.org/resources/issues-briefs/peatlands-and-climate-change

In 2013 the Homer Soil and Water Conservation District surveyed 336,000 acres of wetlands between the Cook Inlet shore and the border of the Refuge, and found that much of was it peatland containing deep, carbon-sequestering organic soil. The surveyed area was overall about 41 percent wetland, in a less disturbed state than many wetlands in the lower 48. It was already starting to dry out, however. Ed Burg wrote a Refuge Notebook column about the drying of peatland and consequent vegetation changes in 2005, speculating that the drying of the peninsula’s wetlands had begun much earlier.

“The annual water balance (precipitation minus
potential evapotranspiration) declined almost 50% after the drought of 1968-69 and has never fully recovered, due to warmer summers,” he wrote. “It is likely that drying of the Peninsula began at that time, and it appears to have accelerated in the 1990s, as shown by recently dried up ponds and fallen water levels of closed-basin lakes.”

Conserving peatlands as carbon sinks should be part of our land use discussion in September. Last August the Kachemak Bay Research Reserve started exploring the possibility of offering Kenai peninsula peatland as an offset on the carbon market. Credits could be used to fund preservation projects — this is one practical land use idea we could look at advocating.