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Anders Ahlström

Anders Ahlström

Senior lecturer

Anders Ahlström

Mapping of peatlands in the forested landscape of Sweden using lidar-based terrain indices

Author

  • Lukas Rimondini
  • Thomas Gumbricht
  • Anders Ahlström
  • Gustaf Hugelius

Summary, in English

Globally, northern peatlands are major carbon deposits with important implications for the climate system. It is therefore crucial to understand their spatial occurrence, especially in the context of peatland degradation by land cover change and climate change. This study was aimed at mapping peatlands in the forested landscape of Sweden by modelling soil data against lidar-based terrain indices. Machine learning methods were used to produce nationwide raster maps at 10ĝ€¯m spatial resolution indicating the presence or not of peatlands. Four different definitions of peatlands were examined: 30, 40, 50 and 100ĝ€¯cm thickness of the organic horizon. Depending on peatland definition, testing with a hold-out dataset indicated an accuracy of 0.89-0.91 and Matthew's correlation coefficient of 0.79-0.81. The final maps showed a national forest peatland extent of 60ĝ€¯292-71ĝ€¯996ĝ€¯km2, estimates which are in the range of previous studies employing traditional soil maps. In conclusion, these results emphasize the possibilities of mapping boreal peatlands with lidar-based terrain indices. The final peatland maps are publicly available at 10.17043/rimondini-2023-peatlands-2 (Rimondini et al., 2023) and may be employed for spatial planning, estimating carbon stocks and evaluating climate change mitigation strategies.

Department/s

  • LU Profile Area: Nature-based future solutions
  • Dept of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science
  • MERGE: ModElling the Regional and Global Earth system
  • BECC: Biodiversity and Ecosystem services in a Changing Climate

Publishing year

2023-08-08

Language

English

Pages

3473-3482

Publication/Series

Earth System Science Data

Volume

15

Issue

8

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Copernicus GmbH

Topic

  • Physical Geography

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1866-3508