How can we save Canada’s peatlands?

Peatlands only cover about 3 percent of the world’s land area but store almost one-third of soil carbon. When healthy, they act as giant carbon sinks, biodiversity hotspots, flood barriers and water filters. But when drained, dried or disturbed by human activity and climate change, they can quickly release their trapped carbon back into the atmosphere.

Protecting these wetlands, then, is crucial in the fight against the climate crisis – and nowhere more so than in Canada, where they cover a whopping 12 percent of the total land area, making up roughly a quarter of the world’s peatlands.

So, what are some of the challenges facing Canadian peatlands, and what are scientists and policymakers doing about them?

Find out by joining us for this GLF Live with Lorna Harris, director of WCS Canada’s Forests, Peatlands and Climate Change Program.

Lorna Harris is the director of the Forests, Peatlands & Climate Change Program at WCS Canada. Harris is an ecosystem scientist with an interdisciplinary skill set, working from the local to the global scale to assess how ecosystem structure and function, particularly those of peatlands, may be impacted by climate warming and other disturbances. As a dedicated research scientist with a government and policy background, she has worked to improve our scientific understanding of wetlands and peatland ecosystems for over 18 years in both the U.K. and Canada. Harris has extensive research experience in a range of peatland ecosystems across Canada, including the Hudson Bay Lowland, where she completed her PhD research. She has published several papers on peatland carbon cycling and greenhouse gas fluxes and has also worked to create stronger links in science and public policy for peatlands in both the U.K. and Canada.