Designing a Programme to Address Evidence Gaps in Greenhouse Gas and Carbon Flux from UK Peatlands

The ''Designing a Programme to Address Evidence Gaps in Greenhouse Gas and Carbon Flux from UK Peatlands” project is now officially accredited under the Living with Environmental Change programme.

The project specification has been co-designed by the Joint Nature Conservation Committee in conjunction with Defra, Natural England, the Countryside Council for Wales, Scottish Natural Heritage, the Forestry Commission and Department for Energy and Climate Changes with support from the Scottish Government, Scottish Environment Protection Agency, and the Welsh Assembly Government. The project is overseen by a Steering Group which will ensure collaboration and contributions of data and information from each partner and ensure that the outputs will useful to all.

Importance of peatlands

Over the past 10,000 years UK peatlands have stored (sequestered) significant amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Our peatlands contain over half the approximately 4500 million tonnes of carbon stored in UK soils. However, peatlands in the UK have been extensively degraded leading to the release of carbon dioxide and other greenhose gasses.

Damaged peatlands can also lose their stored carbon through rainwater pathways underground and through streams, as particulate or dissolved organic matter, and as dissolved inorganic carbon derived from organic materials.

There is increasing pressure to restore damaged peatlands, partly to protect the carbon that they store. This restoration will prevent losses of peat carbon, but may also increase methane emissions. The importance of peatland management to the releases of greenhouse gases has been recognised globally and within Europe. In the UK the ECOSSE project and the Partnership Project to protect and enhance Peat Soils have key objectives to understand the impacts of management and land use on carbon and green house gases fluxes in peatlands. However a recent review indicates a lack of monitoring data to indicate the typical range of emissions that are associated with peat under different management regimes.

The relationship between peatland management and rates of water-borne carbon loss has been well studied in a few upland peatland sites in the UK, owing to their importance for water quality, but other types of peatland (e.g. lowland fen peats) have not been studied. Also, the fate of carbon lost through these pathways remains unknown.

An understanding of the impact of management on peatland green house gases and carbon flux will inform improved management of peatlands to deliver climate change mitigation and adaptation. It will also provide more detailed information on the influence of our peatlands on national green house gases flux, and enable quantification of green house gases and carbon flux reductions from peatland restoration to be recognised as an ecosystem service.

This project brings together a wide range of UK government agencies and departments with researchers to design a programme of research which will address key evidence gaps relating the management of UK peatlands to their flux of greenhouse gases and carbon.

Results should be available by the end of July 2010 and further details will be posted on this website at that time. A synopsis of the work being undertaken can be downloaded here: