Towards a microbial process-based understanding of the resilience of UK peatland systems

Peatlands are the largest store of terrestrial carbon in the UK and carbon uptake and release from these systems is highly sensitive to changes in climate and human impacts on the peatland ecosystem. This application will aim to define a series of key research questions around the contribution of UK upland peatlands to climate resilience, particularly with respect to resilience of carbon stores to drought and flood in restored and eroded landscapes. We aim to co-produce these research questions through engagement with two key academic communities and with peatlands practitioners and to define them in an authoritative state of the science paper. The project will bring together a multidisciplinary group of peatlands scientists, microbiologists and peatland management practitioners. Other key outputs will be a Prioritised Research Plan and a Stakeholder Guidance document.
While there has been work on the impact of upland restoration on peatland carbon dynamics, the process understanding of the links between climate change, flood, drought and peatland carbon storage is limited, and the potential connection with climate resilience is unclear. The processes governing carbon store resilience are predominantly microbial, requiring collaboration between microbiologists and the well-established communities of peatlands scientists and practitioners. Through considering the role of microbes in driving the resilience of the carbon store in peatlands the proposal addresses objective 1, knowledge gap 2 and objective 2 of the UK Climate Resilience programme.
We are requesting £45 k to define the key research questions linking microbial diversity and function to the resilience of the peatland carbon store.
We propose five activities:
1) convening a series of interdisciplinary workshops of leading UK and international microbiologists, peatland scientists and restoration practitioners to develop interdisciplinary research approaches to understanding peatland response to flood and drought;
2) formulating a Prioritised Research Plan and a Stakeholder Guidance document from these workshops;
3) work with peatland stakeholder groups to develop practical applications of the process understanding (e.g. use of microbial community data as indicators of restoration success);
4) engagement with groups modelling UK climate resilience to incorporate data on uplands and upland processes into wider UK climate resilience work;
and
5) synthesis of the findings from these activities with a major review of the literature to define the state of the science and key research questions to develop a process based understanding of the potential role of peatlands in climate resilience.

a. who could potentially benefit from the proposed research over different timescales?
The main beneficiaries are the UK climate resilience community, managers of upland peatlands (e.g Natural England, National Trust, water companies and moorland owners), and peatland policy makers (DEFRA, NRW, SEPA). More broadly beneficiaries are UK populations dependent on peatland ecosystem services who will benefit from more process based management of the peatland resource delivering resilience of these services under conditions of climate change. Connections with the general public will be supported through engagement with the stakeholders, (particularly MFFP) and the wider UK Climate Resilience programme. The community building and understanding delivered through the programme will occur within programme timescales, longer term benefits will accrue from the research base that the programme will establish. We would expect substantive research bids from the community to focus on the key research questions emerging from the state of science work.

b. how might the potential beneficiaries benefit?
The primary aim of this project is to build a community of peatland scientists, microbiologists, and peatland practitioners/policy makers engaged around exploring the benefits of understanding the microbial mechanisms underpinning climate regulation and delivery of other ecosystem services through peatland restoration. The key benefits will be development of a consensus understanding of the current state of the science and the building of a network to research the key science questions linking this mechanistic understanding with delivery of climate resilience for these systems.