Quantifying Historically Mined Peat Volumes and CO ₂ Emissions of the Former Bargerveen Peat-Mining Site, the Netherlands

We present legacy data from a peat thickness survey conducted in the Bargerveen peat mining area (The Netherlands) in 1880 CE. We use these data to determine past peat volume and carbon stock, then compare the results with information from a recently published 3D geological subsurface model to quantify the volume of peat mined in the past. We use the quantified mined peat volume to estimate the amount of soil carbon that has disappeared and how much carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) has been emitted into the atmosphere. We find that the thickness of the original peat layer was between 1.5 and 12.0 m, with an average thickness of 5.28 m. The initial peat volume was about 0.26 km 3 , whereas the remaining peat volume is around 0.10 km 3 . The mined peat contained about 8.32 Mton of soil carbon which, when fully oxidised, represents a CO 2 emission of around 30.53 Mton. This analysis aids the process of peatland recovery by enabling a better understanding of the dimensions of the former pristine peat landscapes that once abundantly prevailed in The Netherlands but have now largely vanished as a result of human activities.