USING CAPACITANCE PROBES FOR INVESTIGATING BIOGENIC GAS DYNAMICS IN PEAT SOILS FROM THE EVERGLADES

Peatlands are known to act as carbon sinks while representing major sources of biogenic gases such as methane (CH₄) and carbon dioxide (CO₂), two potent greenhouse gases. Subtropical climate in the Florida Everglades with overall warm temperatures (when compared to boreal systems) have resulted in conditions conducive to biogenic gas releases throughout the entire year. Such releases are however not well understood and the temporal distribution and dynamics of biogenic gas release from peat soils of the Florida Everglades is uncertain. The purpose of the work proposed here is to test the use of capacitance moisture probes to better constrain temporal variability in biogenic gas releases from peat soils at the lab scale in several samples from the Florida Everglades. Probes are fit to dataloggers that allow measuring moisture content variability at subminute sampling intervals, and infer gas content variability at a temporal resolution previously unreported (to our knowledge) for peat soils in the Everglades. This work has implications for better understanding patterns of gas release from peat soils in the Everglades and how climate change may affect gas dynamics.