Developing a simple, cost-effective way to assess peatland health on the molecular level

Peatlands store twice the C stored in all Earth's standing forests and thus have major significance in terms of climate change mitigation (1). Despite their acknowledged importance, peatlands have and continue to face threats from land use and climate change. Drainage and drought together have already switched 11% of the global peat bogs to sources rather than sinks of C and without intervention it is predicted that C losses could occur in 60% of the world's peat bogs (2).
Multimillion £ investments have been made into restoration mainly via rewetting. Examination of fluxes or vegetation have been used to monitor these restoration methods. However, to assess whether the C-cycling process has been restored requires analysing the peat organic matter at the molecular level.
The Bell group is examining changes to peatlands on the molecular level using the most powerful techniques, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and Mass Spectrometry (3). Our methods so far have required taking peat cores, which is an invasive intervention. The proposed PhD project builds on this research and aims to develop a simple, less invasive method for examining restoration on the molecular level.(4)
The practical work will initially involve setting up a protocol to examine the composition of representative litter bags before and after burial, as well as organic matter. The selection of sampling sites is essential therefore the examination and collection of physical, chemical and biological properties from a range of damage/restored peatland site will be required. The site selection process and properties will happen alongside work conducted by members of the Bell group, as part of a funded project to examine the molecular, microbial and enzymatic synergies and their significance to peatland condition in sites across UK, Canada and Sweden. The buried samples as well as organic matter samples collected from the same sites will be examined using a range of molecular techniques including liquid and solid state NMR and high resolution MS. To compare data from the sites and uncover important molecular indicators will require the use of chemometric and visualisation tools.
References
(1) R. Cris, S. Buckmaster, C. Bain and M. Reed, Global Peatland Restoration demonstrating SUCCESS, IUCN UK National Committee Peatland Programme Report, 2014
(2) N. Fenner and C. Freeman, Nature Geoscience, 4, 895-900, 2011
(3) N.G.A. Bell, Molecular metrics for assessing the status of peatlands, Soil Security Fellowship, 2016
(4) N. G.A. Bell, A. Smith, Y. Zhu, W. H. Beishuizen, K. Chen, D. Forster, Y. Ji, E. A. Knox,Sci. Reports, in review - preprint available on request, 2019