Hot spots and hot moments of greenhouse gas emissions in agricultural peatlands

Drained agricultural peatlands occupy only 1% of agricultural land but are estimated to be responsible for approximately one-third of global cropland greenhouse gas emissions. However, recent studies show that greenhouse gas fluxes from agricultural peatlands can vary by orders of magnitude over time. The relationship between these hot moments (individual fluxes with disproportionate impact on annual budgets) of greenhouse gas emissions and individual chamber locations (i.e. hot spots with disproportionate observations of hot moments) is poorly understood but may help elucidate patterns and drivers of high greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural peatland soils. We used continuous chamber-based flux measurements across three land uses (corn, alfalfa, and pasture) to quantify the spatiotemporal patterns of soil greenhouse gas emissions from temperate agricultural peatlands in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta of California. We found that the location of hot spots of emissions varied ove...