Groundwater–CO ₂ emissions relationship in Dutch peatlands derived by machine learning using airborne and ground-based eddy covariance data

Summary

Abstract. Peatlands worldwide have been transformed from carbon sinks to carbon sources due to years of intensive agriculture requiring low water tables. In the Netherlands, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from drained peatlands mount up to 5.6 Mton annually and, according to the Dutch climate agreement, should be reduced by 1 Mton by 2030. It is generally accepted that mitigation measures should include raising the water level, and the exact influence of water table depth has been increasingly studied in recent years. Most studies do this by comparing annual eddy covariance (EC) site-specific CO2 budgets to mean annual effective water table depths. However, here we apply a different approach: we integrate measurements from 16 EC towers with EC measurements from 141 flights by a low-flying