Background

Peatlands represent significant carbon stores, vulnerable habitats, and archives of paleoenvironmental information. Potentially, they act as the most efficient ‘tool’ in mitigating anthropogenic climate change, containing approximately 455Gt of carbon; twice the amount found in the world’s forests (Dunn and Freeman, 2011). Resource exploitation, conversion for agriculture, and response to rising temperatures has led to widespread degradation over the last century. Back in 2000, Bousquet et al. predicted a 2°C increase in global average temperature (as based off the IPCC prediction) would result in the northern wetland carbon sink to switch to a carbon source. This prediction is sadly coming to fruition (Bonn et al., 2014; IUCN, 2018; Petrokofsky et al., 2012; Van Der Werf et al., 2009).

The potential of peatlands acting as a Green House Gas (GHG) source was first discussed back in the IPCCs 1990 Climate Change Assessment by Moore et al. (1990). We are aware of the devastating impact degraded peatlands are/could keep having on the global GHG budget. Yet, little action has been undertaken. We do not have any time left. We need to act now to: (1) safeguard any existing ‘natural’ peat bogs; (2) understand their exact injection of GHGs into the regional, national, and global budget; (3) investigate peat down to the microscale, to understand their structure and functioning behaviour which can lead us to implement the most efficient restoration strategies.

Together, we will protect, restore, and enhance our UK peatlands...

Preliminary Research Findings

As part of Work Package 3 (see Proposed Plan page), this project aims to quantify the direct carbon costs of blanket peatland restoration interventions. This will enable the UK to successfully include the carbon benefits of peatland restoration in climate change targets and promote sustainable management in restoration practice. Information regarding the direct carbon costs associated with coir log application compared with peat bunding, produced for the European Research Development Fund base line carbon reduction calculations, can be found here (please cite as Brennand, J. (2022) Quantifying the carbon benefits of blanket peatland restoration. European Regional Development Fund CO2e calculation, 7pp. Available at: link). Further details of the intervention approaches and carbon calculations are detailed. Solid black lines represent areas where sensitive information has been removed for confidentiality, however all figures are presented to guide the reader through the calculation process. Please feel free to contact me through the Get in Contact page where I would be happy to discuss the preliminary research calculations further. Thank you.