Disappearing aapa mires and why we should care: unnoticed climate change exacerbates drainage effects on birds

Abstract

Aapa mires are distinctive base-enriched northern peatland systems, often with pronounced flark-string (deep-pool) surface features. Aapa mires are used by specialist breeding migratory waterbirds (particularly Broad-billed Sandpiper Calidris falcinellus, Jack Snipe Lymnocryptes minimus, Taiga Bean Goose Anser fabalis and Pintail Anas acuta) and support high densities of other nesting wader species (Wood Sandpiper Tringa glareola, Spotted Redshank Tringa erythropus, Ruff Calidris pugnax, Common Snipe Gallinago gallinago, Curlew Numenius arquata and Whimbrel Numenius phaeopus) compared with other peatland landforms. Remote sensing, palynology and peat stratigraphy studies confirm rapid and massive loss of aapa mires through recent drainage, but now also through climate change. Botanists report that recent warming has caused enhanced successional expansions in ombrotrophic raised mire vegetation to engulf aapa mires, destroying their unique surface and nutrient characteristics. As the waterbird species associated with aapa mires cannot survive on acidic base-poor raised mire systems, this ecological change places their populations in jeopardy. While acknowledging the need to reduce climate change through other means, these changes prioritize the need for international cooperation to extend and improve site-safeguarding of intact aapa mires and restoration of damaged aapa mires, as well as effective conservation of affected avian species throughout their full annual cycle to safeguard them, aapa mires and their associated bird communities for future generations. The case regarding aapa mires highlights the need to establish new mechanisms to create cohesive networks of protected areas for special habitats that are of disproportional importance to key avian populations and other wetland species that may not be adequately represented in current site-safeguard networks.