National Wetland Condition Assessment and Estimates of Carbon Storage in U.S. Wetland Soils

Pew Charitable Trusts – Peatland Mapping Workshop Series.  Amanda Nahlik is invited to present at the Peatland Mapping Workshop webinar focused on quantifying peatland extent with the goal of producing a national peatland map.  This webinar series was organized to increase understanding of the extent and status of peatlands in the United States. This understanding will improve estimates of current GHG emissions/removals from peatlands for use in assessing climate change mitigation potential.  Amanda will present her research with carbon storage in US wetland soils with a focus on how soils are measured in EPA’s National Wetland Condition Assessment (NWCA).

Impact/Purpose

The National Wetland Condition Assessment (NWCA), conducted every five years since 2011, produces the only field-based dataset on wetlands and wetland condition using a probabilistic survey design in the U.S. Because of this, the NWCA data is being increasingly used for research and efforts outside U.S. EPA. In this invited talk at the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Peatland Mapping Workshop, Dr. Amanda Nahlik introduces the NWCA and provides an overview of some of the methods, data, and results important for national peatland mapping efforts. Maps of organic-dominated wetlands in the U.S. sampled as part of the NWCA in 2011 and 2016 are presented in addition to teal carbon storage estimates in inland freshwater wetlands (including peatlands). This presentation addresses one of the goals of the workshop – to discuss leveraging NWCA data with other datasets in a ‘bottom-up’ approach to produce a draft national peatland map.

Citation

Nahlik, A. National Wetland Condition Assessment and Estimates of Carbon Storage in U.S. Wetland Soils. Pew Charitable Trusts Peatland Mapping Workshop Series, Virtual, OR, March 20 - April 17, 2024.