Wildfire legacies on pyrogenic carbon stocks in Amazonian peatlands
Wang, Yuwan, Gallego-Sala, Angela, Bird, Michael I., Moss, Patrick, McGowan, Hamish A., Benavides, Juan C., Honorio Coronado, Eurídice N., and Feldpausch, Ted R. (2025) Wildfire legacies on pyrogenic carbon stocks in Amazonian peatlands. Communications Earth & Environment, 6 (1). 678.
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Abstract
Amazonian peatlands are carbon-rich ecosystems that act as long-term carbon sinks but have faced increasing fire risks in recent decades. As a legacy of past fires, the contribution of pyrogenic carbon (PyC) to carbon cycling in these peatlands remains poorly understood. Here, we assess PyC accumulation variability using six cores spanning peatlands in northwestern Amazonia using hydrogen pyrolysis. We also estimate the PyC stock for the entire Amazonian peatlands by combining our field dataset with published sources. The PyC to total organic carbon ratio averaged 1.2% across our sites and increased with peat age. We estimate a total peatland PyC stock of 0.73 ± 0.61 Pg for the Amazon Basin, representing 1.6% of their TOC stock. Due to the slower turnover of PyC in peatland ecosystems, our findings indicate the importance of PyC generated by past fires and highlight the potential long-term carbon sequestration role of PyC in the future carbon cycle.
| Item ID: | 87721 |
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| Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
| ISSN: | 2662-4435 |
| Copyright Information: | ©TheAuthor(s) 2025. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. |
| Date Deposited: | 29 Jan 2026 06:07 |
| FoR Codes: | 41 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES > 4102 Ecological applications > 410205 Fire ecology @ 100% |
| SEO Codes: | 18 ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT > 1806 Terrestrial systems and management > 180601 Assessment and management of terrestrial ecosystems @ 100% |
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