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Contributed Talk

Session: : Forests: Tropical 2

COS 61-2 - New records of peat in white sand forests of Colombia

Tuesday, August 8, 2023
8:15 AM – 8:30 AM PDT
Location: D140
Abstract: Tropical peatlands, as the world’s most carbon dense ecosystems, are critically important for global climate, however their ecology, distribution and extent remain poorly understood throughout much of tropical South America. During extensive field surveys in search of peat-forming wetlands in Colombia’s eastern lowlands, we encountered peat soils up to 2 m thick on top of white sand soils at 8 localities in the Guainia and Vaupes Departments. The sites were dominated by dense and thin short trees (canopy heights as low as 3 to 4 m). Floristic analysis of 206 forest plots sampled in from the Orinoco basin and north-western Amazonia reveals that the plant communities for these Colombian sites are more similar to those of non-peat forming white sand forests than to the peatland pole forests documented in Peru, although both ecosystem types are structurally similar. There are a few anecdotal references to peat occurring atop white sand soils from the upper Rio Negro basin in Brazil, but white sand ecosystems, which cover 335,000 km2 in Amazonia, being poor in soil fertility and often far from navigable rivers and population centers, are relatively infrequently visited and understudied by scientists. Therefore, our observations represent the first deliberate analysis of peat occurrence and measurements of peat depth in white sand forests in South America. We speculate that poorly drained and persistently wet conditions present on some white sand forests in the central Amazon may promote peat accumulation more broadly. Although individually these peatland white sand forests are small in area, they may collectively represent a large unrecognized store of soil carbon potentially sensitive to hydrologic and climatic disturbance.