**9. Future possibilities**

The fate of peatland ecosystems is integral to global sustainability. As scientists, we are acutely aware that carbon stored in peatland ecosystems may be released to the atmosphere, contributing to climate change acceleration. The precise drivers of peatland respiration, the role of the microorganism communities, organic acid leaching, soil mineralization, and other soil carbon pathways are reasonably well understood, but they are not sufficiently formalized into a coherent and interconnected model to provide detailed information concerning near-term peatland degradation [50–55]. Thus, a critical need exists to predict on a regional level specific changes to peatland dynamics because of the multi-faceted nature of accelerated climate change. With this process focus on peatland dynamics, best management practices are slow carbon de-sequestration.

## **Author details**

Michael T. Aide\*, Christine Aide and Indi Braden Department of Agriculture, Southeast Missouri State University, United States

\*Address all correspondence to: mtaide@semo.edu

© 2020 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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