Comment on bg-2021-46 Anonymous Referee # 3 Referee comment on " High greenhouse gas fluxes from peatlands under various disturbances in the Peruvian Amazon

PaÌrn et al., 2021 report greenhouse gas fluxes from peatlands under various disturbances in the Peruvian Amazon. The investigated peatland sites covered (1) a slashand-burn manioc field, (2) a 12-year-old secondary forest grown over a fallow pasture and a banana plantation, and (3) a natural swamp forest. While I very much acknowledge the scientific effort of data collection from a strongly understudied region of the world, I am afraid that the manuscript suffers in its current form from insufficient structural and scientific quality. This is a pity, since the additional laboratory analyses to quantify N2 potential from soil cores from the studied sites are novel and interesting.

scientific effort of data collection from a strongly understudied region of the world, I am afraid that the manuscript suffers in its current form from insufficient structural and scientific quality. This is a pity, since the additional laboratory analyses to quantify N2 potential from soil cores from the studied sites are novel and interesting.
Generally, the introduction is weak and does not clearly introduce why studying greenhouse gases from peatlands under various disturbances is important. The introduction mentions nowhere methane which is probably the most important greenhouse gas in these ecosystems and only a couple of lines are spent on carbon dioxide. Moreover, the data coverage is poor; Only 9 sampling sessions, over a period of 7 months (Sept 2019 to March 2020) were conducted at two sites (swamp forest; manioc field) and only four sessions during two consecutive days in Sept 2020 were conducted at the remaining secondary forest site. The reader is left with no explanation on why this irregular sampling strategy was chosen. Lastly, the discussion section does not contextualize the findings with other scientific literature, especially the aspect of disturbance. The word disturbance does not even appear in the discussion. Again, methane as an important greenhouse gas in these ecosystems is barely discussed. Given these substantial drawbacks of the study I recommend rejection of the paper in its current form.

Specific comments:
Abstract General: The Abstract suffers from vague statements and needs to be more concise. Line 29: 'Nitrifier-denitrification was the likely source mechanism' based on which underlying data? This is too speculative.

Introduction:
Line 42-45: How do these numbers relate to each other? Does that mean that these peatlands are a hotspot within the Amazon rainforest hotspot?
Line 54: This sentence is out of context.
Line 59: There is no transition to the C cycle and related CO2 emissions.
Line 62: Can you give a reference for this statement. Drought first and foremost reduces photosynthesis and consequently less assimilates are available for autotrophic and heterotrophic respiration. Line 92: How much gas was sampled and how? With a syringe and needle through a septum?
Line 100: How was CO2 measured? How was the GC calibrated?
Line 104: How much of the data was affected by this quality check?
Line 128: A ~7cm by 6cm soil core is not very representative.
Line 137: How were the samples taken from the continuously flushed vessel?
Line 137: How was this done exactly? N2 is not easy to measure. How was the GC calibrated?

Results and Discussion
Line 154-159: Can the water table change be illustrated graphically along with the actual fluxes of CO2, CH4, and N2O?
Line 155: 'slope forest' is not the same site name as specified in the methods. Same for 'palm swamp'.
Line 165: dry station? I assume the authors refer to the toposequent stations? This needs to be clarified in the method section. Line 166: which site is the 'young swamp forest'?
Line 167: Why does the dry station represent the optimal moisture for soil respiration?
Line 172: Which site is the swamp peat?