EMBER: Effects of Moorland Burning on the Ecohydrology of River basins

Controlled burning is used worldwide for the management of vegetation, yet there is serious concern about the environmental implications of such practices. Across Northern England and parts of Scotland, moorland burning is a traditional practice for encouraging and maintaining heather growth (75% of the world's heather cover occurs in the UK uplands). However, detailed evaluations of the costs, benefits and sustainability of burning are hampered by a lack of basic scientific data. Many moorland owners feel pressured to change what they see as traditional practice despite any convincing evidence of environmental degradation and this is causing serious tension between farmers and regulators. The problem also has major financial implications because heather burning is subsidised by the government under its environmental stewardship scheme, whilst paradoxically an estimated £450-630M is being spent on trying to improve the quality of water courses to meet Water Framework Directive requirements. Unsurprisingly, evaluation of burn sustainability is one of the most pressing applied ecological issues for which upland managers are requesting evidence from the scientific community. EMBER will address these issues by providing the first co-ordinated evaluation of moorland burning effects on river catchment hydrological and ecological processes. Case study sites influenced by prescribed burns will be established in internationally important SSSIs in the Peak District and North Pennines, UK. Without this research, our understanding of hydrological and ecological responses to moorland burning will remain poor, biodiversity will be at risk and these systems will potentially fail to meet EU and UK policy requirements with resultant implications for landowners. EMBER will increase understanding of the processes linking prescribed moorland burning, hydrology, water quality and stream invertebrate communities in upland peat dominated catchments. Four work packages (WP) will aim to: 1. increase understanding of the effects of moorland patch burning on the hydrology and physicochemistry of peat, through examination of changes in soil hydrology and water quality. 2. provide a better understanding of the effects of moorland patch burning on basin runoff quantity and quality, through examination of river flow regimes, suspended sediment concentration and water chemistry. 3. assess the influence of changes in stream hydrology, water quality and sediment fluxes on stream ecosystems through examination of stream invertebrate community biodiversity and fish abundance 4. gain a more fundamental understanding of some environmental drivers of upland aquatic community response to burning by experimentally manipulating fine sediment flux under controlled conditions using a series of streamside mesocosms. Taken together these packages will provide a holistic patch- to basin-scale evaluation of burning from the perspective of peat hydrology, chemistry, river water quantity and quality, and stream ecosystems, thus providing the balanced knowledge base which is currently lacking. In the longer-term we expect EMBER to act as a major reference underpinning UK moorland burning policy.