Power of peat: Why environmentalists are pushing to restore NC's pocosin wetlands

Across North Carolina's coastal plain, the state's pocosin wetlands are getting a public makeover worthy of any Hollywood reality show.

Viewed for centuries as worthless mosquito-filled bogs that needed to be ditched and drained and turned into productive lands as quickly as possible, the peat-filled fields and forests are now seen as some of nature's most valuable assets in a world struggling with climate change.

Although peatlands make up just 3 percent of the Earth's land mass, scientists have said they store twice as much carbon as all the world’s forests combined.

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But they only work when they're wet. Otherwise, the drained peatlands can turn from being carbon sinks to carbon emitters, sending greenhouse gases and other pollutants that were stored in the decaying organic material into the atmosphere when they burn or the organic material is tilled up to be roasted by the sun.

The importance of the state's bogs and moors, which can be found from Manteo to the South Carolina border, was reinforced by a by a recent Duke University study. The research by the school's Wetland Center, found that turning 250,000 acres of drained coastal peatlands in the South that are no longer used as productive farmland back into functioning wetlands could prevent 4.3 million tons of carbon dioxide a year from escaping into the atmosphere. 

According to the center, that amount equals 2.4% of the total annual reductions in carbon dioxide emissions needed by the U.S. to be carbon neutral by 2050.

“Southern pocosin peatlands punch far above their weight in terms of their capacity for carbon storage. Acre for acre, they can store significantly more carbon than forests or grasslands,” said Dr. Curtis Richardson, founding director of the wetland center and the project's lead researcher, in a release announcing the findings. The study was published Sept. 2 in the journal Global Change Biology.

The peatlands work well as carbon sinks because antimicrobial compounds prevent the waterlogged peat, which is full of organic material, from decaying rapidly, even during times of drought. But if water is removed from the equation, the peatlands run the risk of fueling catastrophic, smoky wildfires that feed on the parched peat and can burn for months − events that have happened in the Holly Shelter Game Land in Pender County in recent decades, including last month.

Duke reports that more than 1.7 million acres of coastal peatland bogs in the Southeast have been drained for agriculture and forestry over the years. North Carolina has seen its fair share of wetlands turned into farmland, timber tracts and − more recently − subdivisions and shopping malls to house the throngs of people moving to the state's coastal areas.

The state's peat-filled pocosin areas are marked by woody shrubs and acidic soils, which are often nutrient poor. But outside of protected areas, like Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in the northeast and the state game lands and other reserves that dot areas in the south, the condition of pocosin habitats in much of North Carolina's coastal plain is poor due to fire suppression, changes in hydrology, and conversion to working forests.

Resaturating the soil

In the northeast corner of North Carolina, one of the nation's biggest efforts to restore peatlands has been underway for several years. Eric Soderholm, wetland restoration specialist with The Nature Conservancy, works with federal and state partners to restore the region's degraded peatlands.

He said in an area awash with water and already struggling with sea-level rise and chronic flooding in many areas, getting residents and local communities onboard to "rewater" drained areas was initially met with some understandable skepticism.

“It seems counter intuitive at first: Why would we hold more water in these soils if we’re already dealing with flooding issues?" Soderholm said.

But he said pocosin areas represent some of the highest elevations in the pancake-flat area. Re-saturating those fields allows the peat to act like a sponge, soaking up and holding stormwater and other runoff that otherwise would flood neighboring farmlands and communities. Keeping the areas moist also reduces catastrophic fire risk and prevents the degradation of the peat's organic material, securing the carbon in the soil instead of allowing it to escape into the atmosphere.

“We’re not pumping water into areas to make them artificially wet," Solderholm said. "We're just trying to mimic the natural hydrological patterns of these systems."

Work by the conservancy has also resulted in a first-of-its-kind carbon accounting methodology for landowners across the Southeast to generate carbon credits, which can generate financial gain if the credits are sold, if they decide to restore their peatlands.

Habitat enhancer

North of Morehead City in Carteret County, another project is underway to turn fallow farmland back into functioning wetlands. Since the turn of the century the N.C. Coastal Federation has been working to restore thousands of acres of wetlands that had been ditched and drained for farmland. The nearly 6,000-acre North River Wetlands Preserve project also includes preserving existing wetlands on the property.

Funded through a mix of largely federal and state grants and awards, the project's main goal is to help restore the natural hydrology of the region. Along with improving flood control, that improves water quality by allowing pollutants from agricultural and other sources to be filtered out of the water before it reaches nearby coastal waters, said Bree Charron, coastal engineer with the federation.

"The restoration has also produced some great habitat for area wildlife and waterfowl. You name it, it's made its home there," Charron said, ticking off bear, turkey, coyotes, ducks and geese as just some of the preserve's residents amid its ponds and forests.

Although the project is more focused on restoring freshwater wetlands than pocosin areas, Charron said rewetting the old farmland through a network of dikes and channels serves a similar purpose − making the area a carbon sink, where trees and plants on the land absorb carbon instead of emit it.

"If we can hold back the water, keep it on the land, there are so many benefits.

"Once you pull the water off, it does become very rich soil," she said, noting the productive farms dotted across the Down East area. "But there are also huge benefits to return the land to what it used to be."

Reporter Gareth McGrath can be reached at GMcGrath@Gannett.com or @GarethMcGrathSN on Twitter. This story was produced with financial support from 1Earth Fund and the Prentice Foundation. The USA TODAY Network maintains full editorial control of the work.