Ian Lawson

Peat in the Pastaza–Marañón Foreland Basin (PMFB), northern Peru, forms beneath open wetlands, palm swamps, pole forests and seasonally flooded forests. These vegetation communities may represent different successional stages of peatlands, but the spatiotemporal patterns of peatland development in Amazonia are still poorly understood. We present a new geochemical and palaeoecological record spanning the last c. 4330 years from an open peatland (San Roque, core SAR_T3_03_B). Our results suggest the persistence of predominantly herbaceous vegetation communities at the core site since the start of peat accumulation (c. 3180 cal a bp). Micro‐X‐ray fluorescence core scanning provides evidence for episodes of fluvially derived minerogenic input and simultaneous increases in flood‐tolerant taxa relating to intervals of increased frequency and depth of riverine flooding. The establishment of …

The recently described peatlands of northern Peruvian Amazonia are relatively intact compared with peatlands elsewhere in the tropics. They make an important contribution to regional biodiversity and, by sequestering carbon, to climate change mitigation. Research to date has focused on their physical and biological aspects, but peatlands are not simply natural phenomena: they are used, valued and understood socially and culturally in profoundly different ways by different groups of people.This research project used an interdisciplinary participatory approach, working with peatland communities and stakeholders in Peru, to bring together the different perspectives needed to produce a comprehensive understanding which the natural sciences cannot achieve alone. The three central aims of the project were to 1) characterise the ecology and sociocultural values of the ecosystem types identified by local communities; 2) identify the strategies and challenges around community management of natural resources; and 3) identify opportunities for peatland conservation and maintenance of livelihoods. We worked with five peatland forest communities, three mestizo and two indigenous, in the Pastaza-Marañón Basin, which is the largest peat-forming area in lowland Peru. To address our aims we used a range of methods, both ecological (plot-based vegetation survey, measuring peat properties) and sociological (participatory mapping, interviews, focus groups).

La industria del petróleo y el gas ha estado presente de manera. importante en la Amazonía peruana desde la década de 1970. El registro histórico de esta industria, en términos de impactos ambientales y sociales, es variado. Por un lado, el petróleo ha sido un facilitador fundamental del desarrollo socioeconómico y el progreso tecnológico en todo el mundo. En Perú, como en muchos otros países, la extracción de petróleo y de gas trajo riqueza a una amplia gama de negocios relacionados con esta industria, a sus inversionistas, a los gobiernos regionales y al estado. El sector de los hidrocarburos ha proporcionado empleo remunerado a muchos miles de peruanos. Por otro lado, incluso antes del descubrimiento, en la década de 1980, de que el calentamiento global era un problema de escala global, existían preocupaciones de larga data sobre los impactos ambientales más locales de los derrames de petróleo y la contaminación del aire. Tanto los discursos públicos como los académicos, han expresado su malestar por las injusticias sociales que a veces acompañaron las acciones de la industria del petróleo y el gas. Las profundas consecuencias de la dependencia de la sociedad al petróleo y al gas aún están sujetas a mucha investigación y debate (ver, por ejemplo, Bridge y Le Billon, 2017 para una introducción crítica).

Donde habitan los neba es un libro que recoge los resultados de las investigaciones realizadas durante casi una década en los territorios de varias comunidades urarinas asentadas en el río Chambira y en uno de sus auentes, el río Tigrillo, en pleno corazón de uno de los complejos de humedales más importantes del planeta, el Abanico del Pastaza. Representa el trabajo multi e interdisciplinario y colaborativo llevado a cabo entre las comunidades, las federaciones locales (FEPIURCHA y FEIURCHA), la Universidad de St Andrews en el Reino Unido y el Instituto de Investigaciones de la Amazonía Peruana - IIAP. La información contenida en su interior amplía el conocimiento existente sobre este importante paisaje biocultural de nuestra Amazonía, mostrando la riqueza cultural y ecológica de los territorios urarinas y desvelando el vínculo todavía existente entre naturaleza y cultura en toda la cuenca. Un viaje …

The oil and gas industry has a long history of operating in peat-forming regions in the tropics, but the extent to which peatland ecosystems are vulnerable to those operations is not well understood. This knowledge gap is concerning given the continuing drive to explore peatland areas for hydrocarbons. Here we present an analysis of the exposure of tropical peatlands to the oil and gas industry and review what is known of the peatlands' sensitivity to that exposure. We show that across the tropics, oil and gas infrastructure is more concentrated in peat-forming regions than we would expect by chance alone, which we suggest is likely due to the persistence over geological timescales of basins which can be suitable both for forming oil and gas source rocks, and for encouraging the poorly-drained conditions that support peat accumulation. Focusing on a case study from Peru, we discuss the extent to which peatlands …

Over the past two decades, the existence of intact peatlands in lowland Amazonia has been demonstrated, including a vast area of potential peat-forming vegetation of around 43,617 km2 in the Pastaza-Marañón Foreland Basin (PMFB), in the Loreto Department of north-east Peru. Peat sampling and floristic assessments have revealed the presence of peat in four ecosystem types in the PMFB: palm swamps, peatland pole forests, open peatlands, and, more rarely, in seasonally flooded forests. However, recent field investigations and palynological studies show that temporal changes in vegetation in peatlands may have been driven by changes in the degree of flooding, suggesting greater complexity in the controls on peatland development and in the spatiotemporal relationships between ecosystems than current conceptual models allow. Here we present new high-resolution palynological, geochemical and …

Peatlands of the central Congo Basin have accumulated carbon over millennia. They currently store some 29 billion tonnes of carbon in peat. However, our understanding of the controls on peat carbon accumulation and loss and the vulnerability of this stored carbon to climate change is in its infancy. Here we present a new model of tropical peatland development, DigiBog_Congo, that we use to simulate peat carbon accumulation and loss in a rain‐fed interfluvial peatland that began forming ~20,000 calendar years Before Present (cal. yr BP, where ‘present’ is 1950 CE). Overall, the simulated age‐depth curve is in good agreement with palaeoenvironmental reconstructions derived from a peat core at the same location as our model simulation. We find two key controls on long‐term peat accumulation: water at the peat surface (surface wetness) and the very slow anoxic decay of recalcitrant material. Our main …

The central Congo Basin contains the largest known peatland complex in the tropics. Here we present a detailed multi-proxy record from a peat core, CEN-17.4, from the centre of a 45 km wide interfluvial peatland (Ekolongouma), the first record of its kind from the central Congo peatlands. We use pollen, charcoal, sedimentological and geochemical data to reconstruct the site's history from the late Pleistocene to the present day. Peat began accumulating at the centre of the peatland ∼19,600 cal BP (∼17,500–20,400 cal BP, 95% confidence interval), and between ∼9500 (9430–9535 cal BP) and 10,500 (10,310–10,660 cal BP) cal BP towards the margins. Pollen data from the peatland centre show that an initial grass- and sedge-dominated vegetation, which burned frequently, was replaced by a Manilkara-type dominated flooded forest at ∼12,640 cal BP, replaced in turn by a more mixed swamp forest at ∼9670 …

This paper examines the relationships between extractive infrastructure, changing territorial strategies, and contemporary processes of subject formation among the Urarina, an indigenous people in the Peruvian Amazon. We first introduce the uneven and combined character of oil extraction in the Loreto region in north-eastern Peru, and how its racialised spatial contradictions are expressed in the ethnopolitical field that gives political form to regional extractive operations. The paper goes on to analyse the case of the Urarina people in the Chambira river basin, their particular place in the geography of extraction, and the case of the community of Nueva Union. We examine contemporary processes of subject formation in the community, which combine radical transformations in the role of money, territorial strategies, use and valuation of the environment, and changes in political structure, in non-linear ways. The …

The Cuvette Centrale in the Congo Basin stores close to 29.0 petagrams of carbon, and preserving it requires knowledge of its topography – a domed structure is an indicator of rain-fed peat. The dense forest prevents most usual ground-based and remote sensing techniques, so a mixture of UAV-based LiDAR combined with ICESat-2 satellite LiDAR and classification techniques were used to estimate the peat shape.

Subjetividad, cambio y economía extractiva en la cuenca del río Chambira — King's College London Skip to main navigation Skip to search Skip to main content King's College London Home King's College London Logo Home Profiles Research units Research output Projects Student theses Activities Datasets Impacts Prizes Search by expertise, name or affiliation Subjetividad, cambio y economía extractiva en la cuenca del río Chambira Luis Andueza * , Katherine H Roucoux, Nina Laurie, Lydia ES Cole, Althea L Davies, Ian T Lawson, Eurídice N Honorio Coronado, Manuel Martín Brañas, Margarita del Aguila Villacorta, Cecilia Nuñez Perez, Wendy Darlene Mozombite, Emanuele Fabiano, Charlotte Wheeler * Corresponding author for this work International Development University of St Andrews University of St Andrews Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter › peer-review …

Globally, peatland ecosystems, wetlands with an accumulation of partially decomposed organic matter in the soil, store the largest volume of terrestrial carbon per unit area (Rydin and Jeglum 2006; Leifeld and Menichetti 2018). They cover nearly 3% of the Earth's land surface (Yu et al. 2010; Page et al. 2011; Dargie et al. 2017), which represents more than the total carbon stored in the Earth's vegetation and nearly twice the volume of carbon present in its forests (Crump 2017). Drained and degraded peatlands emit enormous amounts of greenhouse gases, i.e., 5% of global anthropogenic emissions (IPCC 2014), which are projected to increase. Therefore, protection and sustainable management of these natural environments, as well as urgently needed restoration measures (including rewetting), can avoid emissions and conserve the carbon stored in these ecosystems (Leifeld and Menichetti 2018; FAO …

PurposeThe lived experiences of a gastrostomy tube (GT) in adults with neurodegenerative diseases (NDDs) are not well understood. The aim of this qualitative meta-synthesis was to review and synthesise the available evidence to inform clinical practice and identify research gaps.MethodsMeta-ethnographic synthesis of qualitative studies was conducted with systematic searching of eight databases from inception to March 2021. Qualitative studies reporting personal experiences of GTs in adults with NDDs were identified. New theories were developed during translation of concepts from each study and combined as a “line-of-argument” synthesis. Patient and public involvement was incorporated as two of the authors are living with an NDD and a GT.Results and conclusionsOf 2863 unique records identified, only nine fulfilled the review criteria. All studies recruited participants with motor neurone disease (MND …

The forested swamps of the central Congo Basin store approximately 30 billion metric tonnes of carbon in peat,. Little is known about the vulnerability of these carbon stocks. Here we investigate this vulnerability using peat cores from a large interfluvial basin in the Republic of the Congo and palaeoenvironmental methods. We find that peat accumulation began at least at 17,500 calibrated years before present (cal. yr bp; taken as ad 1950). Our data show that the peat that accumulated between around 7,500 to around 2,000 cal. yr bp is much more decomposed compared with older and younger peat. Hydrogen isotopes of plant waxes indicate a drying trend, starting at approximately 5,000 cal. yr bp and culminating at approximately 2,000 cal. yr bp, coeval with a decline in dominant swamp forest taxa. The data imply that the drying climate probably resulted in a regional drop in the water table, which …

The world’s largest tropical peatland complex is found in the central Congo Basin. However, there is a lack of in situ measurements to understand the peatland’s distribution and the amount of carbon stored in it. So far, peat in this region has been sampled only in largely rain-fed interfluvial basins in the north of the Republic of the Congo. Here we present the first extensive field surveys of peat in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which covers two-thirds of the estimated peatland area, including from previously undocumented river-influenced settings. We use field data from both countries to compute the first spatial models of peat thickness (mean 1.7 ± 0.9 m; maximum 5.6 m) and peat carbon density (mean 1,712 ± 634 MgC ha−1; maximum 3,970 MgC ha−1) for the central Congo Basin. We show that the peatland complex covers 167,600 km2, 36% of the world’s tropical peatland area, and that 29.0 …

Peatlands of the Central Congo Basin, current realities and perspectives CGSpaceA Repository of Agricultural Research Outputs View Item CGSpace Home Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) CIFOR publications View Item CGSpace Home Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) CIFOR publications View Item Toggle navigation Peatlands of the Central Congo Basin, current realities and perspectives Thumbnail Authors Sonwa, DJ Lewis, SL Ifo, SA Ewango, C. Mitchard, ETA Dargie, GC Lawson, IT Gourlet-Fleury, S. Doumenge, C. Gond, V. Betbeder, J. Toham, AK Van Offelen, J. Kopansky, D. D’Annunzio, R. Monsembula, R. Nuutinen, M. Villegas, L. Milliken, K. Philippon, N. Bigot, S. Freeman, OE Bambuta, JJ Jungers, Q. Román Cuesta, RM Date Issued 2022-11 Language en Type Book Chapter Accessibility Open Access Usage rights CC-BY-4.0 Metadata Show full item record Share  …

Tropical peatlands are among the most carbon-dense ecosystems but land-use change has led to the loss of large peatland areas, associated with substantial greenhouse gas emissions. To design effective conservation and restoration policies, maps of the location and carbon storage of tropical peatlands are vital. This is especially so in countries such as Peru where the distribution of its large, hydrologically intact peatlands is poorly known. Here field and remote sensing data support the model development of peatland extent and thickness for lowland Peruvian Amazonia. We estimate a peatland area of 62,714 km2 (5th and 95th confidence interval percentiles of 58,325 and 67,102 km2, respectively) and carbon stock of 5.4 (2.6–10.6) PgC, a value approaching the entire above-ground carbon stock of Peru but contained within just 5% of its land area. Combining the map of peatland extent with national land …

The peat‐forming wetland forests of Amazonia are characterized by high below‐carbon stocks and supply fruit, fibres and timber to local communities. Predicting the future of these ecosystem services requires understanding how hydrological conditions are related to tree species composition and the presence, or absence, of peat. Here, we use continuous measurements of water table depth over 2.5 years and manual measurements of pore‐water pH and electrical conductivity to understand the ecohydrological controls of these variables across the large peatland complex in northern Peruvian Amazonia. Measurements were taken in permanent forest plots in four palm swamps, four seasonally flooded forests and four peatland pole forests. All trees ≥10 cm diameter were also measured and identified in the plots to assess floristic composition. Peat occurs in eight of these twelve sites; three seasonally flooded …

Au niveau mondial, ce sont les écosystèmes des tourbières, ces zones humides dont le sol présente une accumulation de matière organique partiellement décomposée, qui stockent le volume le plus important de carbone terrestre par unité de surface (Rydin and Jeglum 2006; Leifeld and Menichetti 2018). Elles couvrent près de 3% de la surface terrestre du globe (Yu et al. 2010; Page et al. 2011; Dargie et al. 2017), ce qui représente plus du carbone total stocké dans la végétation de la Terre et près de deux fois le volume de carbone présent dans ses forêts (Crump 2017). Les tourbières drainées et dégradées émettent énormément de gaz à effet de serre, c'est-à-dire 5% des émissions mondiales d'origine anthropique (IPCC 2014), qui sont censées augmenter. Par conséquent, la protection et la gestion durable de ces milieux naturels, tout comme des mesures de restauration à prendre d'urgence (notamment par la réhumidification) peuvent éviter des émissions et conserver le carbone stocké dans ces écosystèmes (Leifeld and Menichetti 2018; FAO 2020b).

The settlement of Iceland is known to have had profound impacts on vegetation and landscape stability, but there remain uncertainties around the spatial variability and timing of environmental change, and the impacts of settlement on aquatic ecosystems. Here a new multiproxy palaeoenvironmental reconstruction spanning the last 3000 years is presented from Kalmanstjörn, a small lake in Mývatnssveit, northeast Iceland. Sedimentology, pollen and non‐pollen palynomorphs, and geochemical proxies, dated using tephrochronology, are used to reconstruct terrestrial vegetation, landscape stability and aquatic ecosystems. The data reveal complex environmental dynamics after settlement. At this site, substantial tree populations persisted until the late 15th century, in strong contrast to the rapid deforestation shown by almost all other records from Iceland. The eventual loss of woodland may have been caused by …