Hydrophysical Properties of Peat in Undisturbed and Smelter‐Impacted Peatlands: Implications for Moss Recovery, Drought and Wildfire
Bibliographic record
Abstract
ABSTRACT Peatlands are critical for global climate regulation storing approximately 500 Gt of carbon and accounting for 33% of global soil organic carbon. Regionally, these ecosystems provide essential wildfire resilience and are important pollutant sinks but degradation puts these key ecosystem services at risk. Smelting operations in Sudbury, ON, Canada, released approximately 12 000 t of particulate copper and nickel into the atmosphere between 1883 and 1969. Toxic metal and sulphur deposition on peatlands from smelting activities caused the widespread decline of keystone peatland moss species (i.e., Sphagnum) and altered peat properties. The changes in peat hydrophysical properties due to historical metal contamination likely reduce peatland resilience to drought and wildfires, thereby increasing the potential for toxic heavy metal remobilisation; however, these peat properties changes have yet to be quantified. We determine 1) how historical smelter pollution impacts peat hydrophysical properties by measuring bulk density, saturated hydraulic conductivity and soil water retention in the upper 40 cm of both undisturbed (located ~160 km outside the deposition region) and smelter‐impacted peatlands, 2) use these data to explore the vulnerability of these peatlands to wildfires and drought and 3) assess the potential for natural Sphagnum moss recovery. Smelter‐impacted peat had a significantly higher bulk density, lower macroporosity and saturated hydraulic conductivity that drove large differences in modelled soil water tension profiles during simulated drying events. These differences in soil water tension and retention profiles resulted in the smelter‐impacted peat having a far greater proportion of the peat profile that would be susceptible to smouldering combustion than the undisturbed peat. Additionally, the smelter‐impacted peat properties likely contributed to the limited Sphagnum moss recovery, while concurrently increasing drought and wildfire risk. As such, we argue that contaminated peatland restoration is necessary to enhance Sphagnum moss recovery to mitigate toxic metal remobilisation risk from drought and wildfire.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".