Peatswamp Ecology

Syarifuddin
 Peatland Defination

• Peatlands are ecosystems characterized by the

accumulation of partially decayed organic matter, called
peat, which is formed from plant debris under waterlogged
conditions (Andriesse 1988).
• Lahan yang memiliki lapisan tanah kaya akan bahan
organik (C-organik > 18%), bahan organik >30% dengan
ketebalan gambut >50 cm.
• Bahan organik dapat berupa sisa-sisa tanaman yang
belum mengalami pelapukan secara sempurna karena
kondisi lingkungan yang jenuh air dan miskin hara
(Dephut, 2010).
• Sering dijumpai di daerah belakang mangrove atau
cekungan yang drainasenya buruk.
 Peat swamp characteristics

• Airnya berwarna hitam karena tingginya kandungan bahan

organiknya;

• Tanaman tumbuh diatas humus;

• Ukuran tanamannya relatif sama;

• Pertumbuhan tanamannya lebih lambat;

• Vegetasinya didominasi meranti rawa, ramin, jelutung, Agathis,
Nibung dan Rengas.
 Indonesia's peat swamp

• nearly 20 % (40 million ha) = wetlands;

• half of which = peat swamp (mostly found in Kalimantan,

Sumatra, and Papua).

• Only 49 % = remains forested;

• < 10 % = pristine (the rest having been selectively

logged, partially drained, or otherwise degraded).
 Peat Swamp Types

Berdasarkan lingk pembentuknya dibedakan :

• Gambut ombrogen
terbentuk pd lingkungan yg hanya dipengaruhi oleh air hujan.
• Gambut topogen
terbentuk pd lingkungan yang sering terkena air pasang.
 Formation of peat swamp
• Peat swamp forests form in areas where saturated soils or
frequent flooding prevent organic material from fully
decomposing.

• As this organic material slowly accumulates, it retains even more

water through capillary action: up to 13 times its weight.

• Acting as a giant sponge that holds in the moisture, peat swamps

eventually form a dome of wet organic material that can rise
above the surrounding flood levels.

• It takes thousands of years for peatlands to form, with organic

matter accumulating at 0.5 – 2 mm per year.
Process of Peatland Formation
 Peatswamp Zonation

• Tepi sungai: didominasi pedada (Sonneratia

alba) dan api-api (Avicennia officinalis)
• Pesisir pantai: didominasi bakau (Rhizophora)
• Wilayah kubah gambut: didominasi vegetasi
hutan gambut mis: ramin (Gonystylus), meranti
(Shorea spp), terantang (Campnosperma sp),
pulai (Alstonia sp) dsb).
• Pinggir sungai yang payau: didominasi nipah
(Nypa fruticans)
 Peatswamp Acidity &
Decomposting Process

• Sifat masam dan anaerob habitat menyebabkan

keanekaragaman biota (khususnya mikroorganisme
sbg dekomposer) menjadi sangat kecil.
• Dekomposer pada gambut yg umum: Trichoderma,
Fomes, Achromobacter, Streptomyces, dsb.
• Laju perombakan pada kondisi air tergenang 10x
lebih rendah (karena konsumsi O2 lebih tinggi dan
hasil produksi CO2 lebih rendah) dibanding pada air
mengalir.
 Benefit of Peat Swamp Ecosystem

• Provide food, water, fuel and timber sources, as well as

traditional medicine and materials for production of domestic
goods for human being especially traditional local people.

• provides a critical buffer against flooding as the swamp retains

heavy rainfall during the wet season

• slowly releases the moisture over an extended period of time

during drought in the dry season.

• Act as carbon sink.

 Peat swamp as carbon sink

• store up to 20 times more carbon than nearby lowland forests on mineral soil.

• 90 percent of a peat swamp forest's carbon is stored below ground.

• 1 ha store 2,009 tons carbon (1,000 - 7,500) = the greenhouse gases

released in one year by 1,551 passenger vehicles in the US.

• In pristine peat swamp forests carbon remains locked in the soil. However, if a
swamp is drained, the exposure of peat to oxygen allows microbes to break
down the organic matter, releasing that carbon into the atmosphere.

• When 1 ha of peat land converted to an oil palm plantation it releases 10 - 20

tons of carbon/year = the amount of CO2 released by burning 1 tanker truck
full of gasoline.

• When a peat swamp forest is drained, the carbon that accumulated slowly
over 3,000 years can be released in less than 100 years.
• Serapan karbon di TN Berbak mencapai 45,5
juta ton/tahun (2011; KKLHK, ZSL dan Darwin
Institute) = US $ 779
 Peat land facts in Indonesia
• 60% of the tropical peat lands occur in Southeast Asia (mostly in
Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, and Thailand) (Rieley et al. 1996,
Joosten 2004).

• Predisturbance peatland area in Southeast Asia = 20 - 30 million ha

(Rieley et al. 1996), but only 36% remains.

• In the whole Borneo, the average annual deforestation rate for

2002–2005 was estimated as 2.2% for peat swamp forest,
compared with 1.8% for lowland dipterocarp forest (Langner et al.
2007).

• Forest loss in the lowlands of Sumatra and Kalimantan > 70% of

forest clearing in the country from 1990–2005 = 41% loss in total
area (Hansen et al. 2009).
• ramin trees (Gonystylus bancanus), the most
valuable timber species in peat swamps, which is
now listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List.
 Impacts of logging

• logs were moved by railway, has led to more intensive extraction and
greater damage to the residual forest (up to 50%; Rashid and Ibrahim
1994).

• Canals cut for floating out logs change hydrological conditions, making peat
swamp forest more vulnerable to fire;

• logging creates gaps in the canopy that change forest microclimates and
increase the temperature of the peat surface;

• drainage will cause the water table to drop below critical levels (i.e., 0.5
meters to 1 meter below the surface) and can result in shrinkage and
irreversible drying of the peat (Andriesse 1988, Wosten et al. 2006).

• reduce orangutan densities by 21 - 22% (Felton et al. 2003, Morrogh-

Bernard et al. 2003, Johnson et al. 2005)
 Peat Fire (1)
• Tropical peat swamp forests are more vulnerable to destruction by fire
than any other forest type because the soil substrate itself is extremely
flammable when dry (Langner et al. 2007, Langner and Siegert 2009).

• On Borneo, 73% and 55% of the forests affected by fire in 2002 and
2005, respectively, were on peat (Langner et al. 2007).

• El Niño events greatly exacerbates the severity of fire damage.

• Study in Tanjung Puting National Park peat swamp forest surveyed

after fires from 1997–1998 had 13% to 69% fewer species than before,
compared with a 7% to 31% loss of species in low- land dipterocarp
forests in Sungai Wain Nature Reserve and Kutai National Park
(Yeager et al. 2003).

• Burned forest has lower canopy cover, decreased species richness,

and reduced tree and sapling density compared with unburned forest
(Yeager et al. 2003).
 Peat Fire (2)

• fires can burn both above and below the surface, destroying
vegetative structures underground, as well as the seed bank (Page
et al. 2009).

• Deep peat fires can smolder below the surface for months and are
difficult to extinguish. These subsurface fires can also cause the
collapse of overlying material, creating additional tree mortality.

• Areas that have been logged and then burned multiple times have
dramatically lower stem densities and diversities relative to areas that
have burned only once and had little or no logging history (Yeager et
al. 2003, Page et al. 2009).

• Peat forest that has been subjected to one fire has a high probability
of burning again because of the accumulation of unburned dead.
 Peat Swamp Fishes
• 219 species were recorded in peat swamps;

• 80 sp are restricted to peat swamps;

• Habitat for a number of miniature fishes, including Paedocypris

progenetica, the smallest known vertebrate (Kottelat et al. 2006).

• 17 species are classified as vulnerable, endangered, or critically

endangered, 12 of which are point endemics (IUCN Red List).

• Betta persephone, B. miniopinna, and B. spilotogena are listed on the

IUCN Red List as highly threatened by extinction
• Ambassidae = Asiatic glassfishes
 Tropical peat carbon pool

Best estimate 89 Gt
Range 82 - 92 Gt
69 Gt (77%) in Southeast
Asia
Equivalent to:
3.5% global vegetation & soil carbon
pool
15-19% global peatland carbon store
Impact of human disturbance on
carbon release
 Predicted CO2 emission from peatland

Near-current (2005):
355-874 Mt CO2 yr-1
(100–240 Mt C yr-1 )

Projected (2015-2035):
557-981 Mt CO2 yr-1
(150-270 Mt C yr-1 )

Current tropical peat drainage emissions

equivalent to 1.4 – 3.5 % of global emissions from fossil fuels
(25,000 Mt CO2 yr-1) (excluding initial biomass loss & fire)
[based on 91 t ha-1 y-1 CO2 at 1 m & 46 t ha-1 y-1 at 0.5 m drainage]
(Hooijer, Page et al. 2010, Biogeosciences)
• Peatlands are ecosystems characterized by the accumulation of partially decayed
organic matter, called peat, which is formed from plant debris under waterlogged
conditions (Andriesse 1988).

• In the tropics, peat and peaty soils (histosols) form in a variety of conditions, but the
greatest peat depths—and thus carbon stores—occur in peat swamp forests situated at
low altitudes in the river valley basins, watersheds, and subcoastal areas of Southeast
Asia.

• Until recently, the inaccessibility of peat swamp forests and the belief that they support
lower species diversity than dryland rainforests meant that they received relatively little
attention from scientists (Prentice and Parish 1990, Yule 2008).

• Countries with extensive peat swamp forests have tended to regard them as wastelands
that must be converted to more productive land use (e.g., Rijksen and Peerson 1991).
• 55 gigatons of Carbon is estimated in Indonesia peat (Page et al.
2004, Jaenicke et al. 2008)

• Peat swamp forests in Southeast Asia are thus collectively ancient.

• The fossil record confirms the presence of angiosperm- dominated

peat swamp forests in Southeast Asia since the Early Miocene (> 20
million years ago).

• modern peat swamp forests in basins behind the coast suggest that
these formed only in the last 6000 years, after the stabilization of
global sea levels
 Ombrogenous peat swamps

• Peat soil is formed from woody plant debris under high-rainfall

and high-temperature conditions (Andriesse 1988, Chimner
and Ewel 2005).

• In areas with poor drainage, such as basins and valleys, peat

can accumulate over long periods of time until it is above the
groundwater level.

• This process eventually creates dome-shaped “ombrog-

enous” raised bogs that are fed only by rainwater and possess
their own perched water table, with the peat acting as a reser-
voir holding water by capillary forces (Andriesse 1988).
Characteristics of ombrogenous peat

• Some highly developed domes have peat depths of up to 20

meters (m) and their centers may be dry (Anderson 1983).

• The bogs are deficient in nutrients (oligotrophic) because of the

lack of mineral input, and the leaching of organic compounds
causes the water to become extremely acidic (pH 4 or less).

• Ombrogenous peat swamps can also develop inland on flat or

gently convex areas between rivers in places with year-round
rainfall.
Burned Peatland in 2015
Effect of Drainage on Peatland
 Peat swamp forests
• Peat swamp forests were originally very extensive along the sea-
shores immediately behind the mangrove forests.

• the peat layer may reach thicknesses of up to 20 meters.

• water is retained by the spongy structure of the peat, and is highly

acidic with a pH of 3.5-6.0;

• the water is tea-colored when seen against transmitted light, or

black when seen in reflected light, hence the common name of
'black waters'.

• the water has low calcium concentrations and low oxygen levels;

• peat swamp fauna exhibit an unusually high degree of endemism.

 Peat swamps
• are very sensitive to deforestation which is usually
followed by fire.

• seems unable to regrow on burned peat, so

restoration does not occur.

• Peat swamps have been extensively converted

into rice, oil palm plantations;

• 10-20% of the original peat swamps of Peninsular

are important for waterbird migrations.
• Large areas of coastal peat swamps and man-groves have
been turned into ponds for prawn in Thailand, Malaysia and
Indonesia.

• this prawn aquaculture is not sustainable; the ponds can only

be used for about five years before pollution, accumulation of
faecal matters and blooms of toxic algae take their toll.