OFRI researchers at a peatland research site in Polar Bear Provincial Park. Yes, the researcher in the middle is carrying a gun, an occupational necessity when working in polar bear country.

What are those cold brown slabs being processed at OFRI?

If you had strolled by OFRI’s growth chambers recently, you might have seen lab technician ShariAnn Kuiper and resource technician John Schnare carefully unwrapping foil-covered frozen brown slabs resembling brownie bars. If curiosity stopped you, you would have observed them diligently cutting, weighing, and measuring pieces of these slabs. ShariAnn records all these measurements, while John disappears into the freezing growth chamber to slice more samples. They then place them into tinfoil pans and stack them on a cart.

To the average onlooker, this behaviour may appear slightly unusual, but many OFRIites know that they are analyzing peat cores.

So what are peat cores?

Peat forms when decaying plant matter from mosses, sedges, grasses, shrubs, or trees accumulates in permanently waterlogged conditions. When left undisturbed, peatlands can effectively store the carbon sequestered in these plants for thousands of years.

Peat cores are samples of peat. Researchers collect these samples by inserting a specialized corer into the peat.

What are they doing with these cores and why?

These peat cores are part of a study led by research scientist Jim Mclaughlin to learn more about how carbon cycles through Far North peatlands. Peatlands are recognized worldwide as very important for carbon storage. Although they cover only three per cent of the world’s land area, peatlands contain almost 30 per cent of all carbon stored on land. Researchers will also use the cores to discover how fast carbon accumulates in northern peatlands, what the fire history of these areas is, and how water cycles in peatlands respond to changes in climate.

Field crews collected core samples near Kinoji, Attawapiskat, and Polar Bear Provincial Park in the Far North, as well as from fen peatlands near White River during the summers 2009, 2010, and 2011. They transported the cores to OFRI and froze them until they could be processed. See photo story below for what happens to them.

This work will help researchers to determine how much carbon Far North peatlands store or sequester and will be used to develop a peatland carbon sequestration model to support land use planning in Ontario. 
 

Read all about the long, strange trip a peat sample takes, from Attiwapiskat to Jim McLaughlin's computer at http://www.mnr.gov.on.ca/en/Business/OFRI/2ColumnSubPage/STDPROD_100075.html