View article

Peatlands are globally significant stores of soil carbon, where local methane (CH₄) emissions are strongly linked to water table position and microtopography. Historically, these factors have been difficult to measure in the field, constraining our capacity to observe local patterns of variability. In this paper, we show how remote sensing surveys conducted from unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) platforms can be used to map microtopography and depth to water over large areas with good accuracy, paving the way for spatially explicit estimates of CH₄ emissions. This approach enabled us to observe—for the first time—the effects of low‐impact seismic lines (LIS; petroleum exploration corridors) on surface morphology and CH₄ emissions in a treed‐bog ecosystem in northern Alberta, Canada. Through compaction, LIS lines were found to flatten the observed range in microtopographic elevation by 46 cm and decrease …