Prof. Chris Evans (Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, UK) & Prof. Sue Page (University of Leicester, UK)
3 December 2025
15-16 hrs EET, 13-14 hrs UTC, 14-15 hrs CET
Link will be provided by email
The 2014 IPCC Wetlands Supplement provides the only internationally agreed global guidelines to report on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from and removals by peatlands. In the decade since it was published there have been major advances in GHG measurement technologies, and in the number of published studies both of peat surface and fire emissions. As a result, the Tier 1 emission factors (EFs) presented in the Wetlands Supplement no longer reflect the best or most recent data, and do not fully capture the diversity of tropical peat land-use and condition.
This presents a constraint on countries’ efforts to reduce emissions from the land use sector. The Peat Emit project (part of the Aim4Forests programme managed by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, FAO) collected, analysed and updated EFs for peatlands in Southeast Asian and other tropical and sub-tropical regions. Results showed that emissions data remain scarce for many regions, notably Africa but also for managed peatlands across Latin America, the Caribbean and parts of Asia. In contrast, there has been a more than threefold increase in the number of data points available for Southeast Asia.
This has permitted greater disaggregation of EFs for some Wetlands Supplement land-use categories, and significant refinement of EFs for some existing categories. This presentation will summarise the results obtained, and identify data limitations, methodological challenges and remaining evidence gaps for peat surface and fire EFs. It will also describe the potential for emissions reporting to replace current category-based Tier 1 emissions reporting with a simple but mechanistically-based alternative method based on mean water table depths.
Professor Susan Page, MBE, PhD
School of Geography, Geology and the Environment
University of Leicester, University Road, Leicester, LE1 7RH, UK
t: +44 (0)116 252 3318
e: sep5@le.ac.uk
w: www.le.ac.uk
