As glaciers in Alaska retreat faster than anywhere else on Earth, newly exposed landscapes are sprouting patches of peat—carbon-rich wetland soil that pulls CO₂ from the air. These peat patches are largely invisible to current satellite surveys, which miss shallow or scattered deposits. Scientists therefore have no reliable way to count them, track whether they grow into full peatlands, or predict how much carbon they might lock away. The InsPIRE project will fill that gap by combining field observations with computer models, studying both ancient peat formation after the last ice age and modern peat emergence on Alaskan glacier forelands. If the research succeeds, it could transform how global carbon models account for post-glacial landscapes. Governments rely on those models for national carbon inventories and climate policy. Currently, peat in deglaciating mountains is ignored in those calculations. Better data could reveal a previously overlooked natural carbon sink, improving predictions of how fast atmospheric CO₂ will rise as the planet warms.
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Peatlands are organic-rich wetlands that naturally absorb carbon from the atmosphere over millennia. They provide critical ecosystem services such as climate regulation through carbon sequestration and storage. Ongoing rapid glacier recession, driven by anthropogenic climate change, can stimulate the growth of new peatlands by pre-conditioning the landscape for organic matter to accumulate. There is increasing evidence to suggest that these isolated, newly forming peat patches in glacier forelands have the potential to transition into larger, widespread peatlands. Development of peatlands in deglaciating landscapes will, therefore, affect greenhouse gas budgets by sequestering carbon and thereby providing some climate change mitigation. However, due to problems of identifying peatlands in deglaciating mountain landscapes, and a prevailing supposition that they are thin and isolated, the newly forming peat patches remain largely undocumented, unstudied and ignored in estimations of global peatland distribution and carbon stocks. Specifically, (i) there is presently no reliable means to quantify relatively shallow and/or patchy peatlands, (ii) it is unclear if/how/when they transition into established peatlands and thus (iii) whether they can become a larger carbon sink under future atmospheric warming. Furthermore, the formation mechanisms and development histories of these carbon-rich soils are unknown so their vulnerability to climate change is not well understood. The InsPIRE project will determine how ongoing rapid glacier recession stimulates peatland initiation, thus enhancing carbon sequestration and storage. To assess proglacial peatland formation processes in time and space, InsPIRE will provide new insights into the early dynamics of peatland development in Alaska since the end of the Last Glacial Maximum (~14,000-8,000 years ago), and determine the likelihood of peatland development in response to present and future glacier recession. InsPIRE will combine novel observational data and state-of-the-art model simulations to quantify the influence of glacier-related peat patches in carbon cycling. This is a unique interdisciplinary project which combines skills and concepts from glaciology and peatland science to determine the pre-conditioning role of glaciers for peatland initiation. We will target glacier-fed peatlands in Alaska because that is the world region where glacier recession is largest and occurring the fastest, and so acting as a precursor to larger scale (global) phenomenon. Overall, understanding the role of glacier recession on peatland carbon sequestration and storage will mark a step-change in predictive capacity of carbon stocks. Our findings will be used to account for feedbacks between glacier retreat and carbon cycling, and thus used to improve the accuracy of global carbon models. Key beneficiaries will be decision makers in the US national government and other international governments will also benefit when undertaking national carbon assessments.
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