Fascinating peatland ecosystems play a key role in the global cycle – however urgent action is required to protect them from human impact.

Professor Susan Page, from the Department of Geography will give her Inaugural public lecture, For Peat’s Sake: Understanding the Vulnerability of the Tropical Peat Carbon Pool at the University of Leicester on Tuesday 14 May.

The lecture will explore Southeast Asia, where the largest area of tropical peatland is located, and the particular role that tropical peatlands play in the global carbon cycle, with the focus on the impact of human activities that have increased the vulnerability of their carbon pools.

Peatland ecosystems develop where dead vegetation (carbon) accumulates as peat in water-saturated, anoxic conditions. This accumulation can continue over thousands of years, and they cover somewhere between 400 and 600 million hectares – about the same land area occupied by tropical rainforest, and collectively store around 500 to 600 billion tonnes of carbon, equivalent to the amount of carbon located in all of the world’s vegetation.

Professor Susan Page is an ecologist and a biologist by training but her key research interest is in wetland ecology and functioning and wildlife conservation.

Professor Page’s research is focused on the tropical peatlands of Southeast Asia – the topic of her Inaugural lecture.

Professor Susan Page said: "Tropical peatlands, with their high water tables and low decomposition rates, form vast stores of organic carbon tens of metres thick. Most of it is found in Indonesia, where the natural peat swamp forests (also home to endangered animal species such as orangutans) are increasingly being destroyed by deforestation, drainage and fire, to make way for agriculture, in particular oil palm for biofuels and food.

“My research work has shown that the carbon debt associated with recent wildfires and the conversion of peatlands to agriculture, particularly for plantations, is enormous and that the scale of greenhouse gas emissions needs to be taken into account in any assessment of the impact of land use change.”

For Peat’s Sake: Understanding the Vulnerability of the Tropical Peat Carbon Pool will be held at the Ken Edwards Building, Lecture Theatre 1, University of Leicester, University Road, on Tuesday 14 May at 5.30pm. The lecture is free and open to the public.