Current Assessment of the Wetland Carbon Pool in Different Constituent Entities of the Russian Federation

A current, more detailed assessment of the bog and wetland areas in the Russian Federation (RF) and the carbon stock in their peat layers has been conducted. Compared to the previous assessment (Vompersky et al., 1994), the creation of the Wetlands of Russia geoinformation system (GIS) of the Institute of Forestry Science, Russian Academy of Sciences (Vompersky et al., 2005), has made it possible to include, in addition to the cartographic basis, replenishable layers of thematic content and determine the areas of peatlands and carbon stock in their peat layers not only for the whole country, but also for separate constituent entities of the RF country as a whole, but also for the constituent entities of the RF. It is important for the administration of each constituent territory to be aware of the peat stock volumes in order for sustainable nature management to be maintained. It is shown that the area of bogs and wetlands amounted to 328 million ha and the peat stock to 216.3 billion t (absolute dry mass). The stock of carbon associated with the peat was 108.7 billion t. Compared to previous estimates, the area decreased by 11% and carbon stock by 4%. The Annex to the article contains data on the bogs and wetlands areas, overall carbon stock in their peat layers, and specific carbon stocks per unit area of bogs and wetlands for different constituent entities of the RF. The carbon stocks estimates were also obtained separately for the main groups of bog and wetland habitat types.