Mitigating the impacts of intensive agriculture on lowland organic soils

Optimising the trade-off between food and fibre production, and the other services provided by semi-natural and agricultural ecosystems, represents a key global challenge. This challenge is particularly acute in organic soils, both in the UK and globally, due to inherent unsustainability of drainage-based production in former wetland soils. The IPCC estimate that peatland degradation accounts for 3% of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, whilst cultivated organic soils are the UK's largest source of emissions from the land-use sector. Carbon loss and associated land subsidence in areas such as the East Anglian Fens were identified as major threats to UK soils in the recent House of Commons report on Soil Health, with long-term consequences for agricultural yields, rising energy costs of drainage, and flood risk. Nevertheless, drained lowland organic soils currently represent some of the UK's most valuable and productive agricultural land, and are particularly important for the horticultural sector. Whilst re-wetting and restoration of some formerly cultivated organic soils is now taking place, the long-term maintenance of UK agricultural and associated economic output requires their continued cultivation over a large proportion of the existing farmland area. Consequently, there is a pressing need to develop proven methods to mitigate the rates of carbon and GHG emissions loss, and reduce subsidence rates, from these areas.

This project aims to test novel methods to mitigate GHG emissions from organic soils under cropland and intensive grassland cultivation. By working within a new large NERC research programme (ASSIST) involving CEH and Rothamsted research, and making use of a range of cutting-edge instrumentation linked to this and other projects the student will have the opportunity to undertake world-leading research, and to help in the development innovative solutions, ranging from nature-based to agri-tech approaches, to a major global environmental challenge.