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RESEARCH FEATURE
Peatland dissolved organic
carbon emission model
(PeDOCEM)
By Irfan Ahmad Afip
Ph.D Candidate
Department of Geology
We are a team from the Department of
Geology, Faculty of Science, Universiti
Malaya, creating an enhanced causation
correlation that emphasises on DOC emission
and peatland management. It addresses the
effect of anthropogenic activity on peatland
areas and highlights the key factors
contributing to peatland microenvironment
system. Climate change recently had become
the leading global crisis, with extreme
weather having threatened the livelihoods of
millions of people globally.
It would be ideal for predicting the effects of human activity that contribute to climate change
instead: by simply identifying the factors influencing the dissolved organic carbon (DOC) emission,
determining their influence on the environmental system, and predicting the rate at which climate
change will be impacted. Unfortunately, however, the abiotic and biotic factors that influence the
diffusion of DOC in the microenvironment are ambiguous.
There have been many approaches to resolve and better understand the crisis. For instance,
determining the concentration of DOC in freshwater and peatland environments following extreme
flow events. However, the study excluded the biotic factors that influence the environment. To get
around these issues, we have been working on another angle which attempts to incorporate the
biotic and abiotic factors into a quantitative model to determine the causation correlation that
influences DOC production in peatland.
It is based on the idea that it is more efficient to include the mediator, the microbes, to understand
better the causation correlation of biogeochemistry within the peatland soil profile. It is a promising
approach for building causation systems that form from either natural or anthropogenic activity.
Our work will address the processes of DOC emission that would be critical to providing
appropriate simulations in response to short and longer-term changes in climate and peatland
management.
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