Erosion hotspots and carbon loss from upland peatlands.
Lead Research Organisation:
Durham University
Department Name: Geography
Abstract
Over the last 20 years peatlands have undergone a transformation as a restoration culture has begun to pervade the management of these landscapes. As a result many eroded and bare peat landscapes have begun to repair and vegetate leaving increasingly fragmented areas of bare peat. Such areas are the focus of continued erosion, are hard to restore and often difficult to access. These hotspots of erosion continue to threaten the overall carbon balance of the landscape and limit the efforts of restoration. Therefore it is important to ask whether the effort, and expense, required to restore these small, often disparate, areas has a significant benefit or should such areas be left alone as their impact on the restored ecosystem services of the uplands is negligible compared to the cost of further restoration?
Our objectives are to:
1) Understand the distribution, size, and connectedness of bare peat hotspots and how this has changed in the historic past within a spectrum of upland peat catchments (North Pennines to Peak District).
2) Undertake field experiments to understand the dynamics of bare peat patches and how the size, shape and organisation of patches across the landscape changes and impacts on erosion.
3) Develop a management strategy for the restoration of erosion hotspots and devise techniques that will yield greatest benefit to the local community / economy.
4) Test possible interventions to target and restrict the impact of erosion hotspots.
To achieve these objectives we provide an original framework which utilises existing resources and expert knowledge:
1) Mapping - Using aerial imagery (existing bespoke photography, LiDAR and UAV) and ground-based dPGPS survey the size and distribution of erosion hotspots will be mapped; the connectivity of these patches will be determined; and graph theory will be used to produce metrics to describe the degree of landscape fragmentation. Surveys will be repeated for a historical series of photographs allowing us to study the development of patches through time. Detailed mapping will be used to construct a typology of bare patches.
2) Process Measurement - At several key sites, chosen using the typology produced in (1), monitoring will be undertaken on eroding margins, vegetating margins and core areas of bare peat. The significance of wind and water erosion will be measured alongside the local hydrology (water table profiles and flow partitioning) and carbon uptake / loss pathways. Our measurements will allow us to characterise the main components of the local carbon budget providing an assessment of patch-scale carbon dynamics and physical peat fluxes.
3) Modelling and targeting restoration - Based on (1) and (2) we will upscale results to produce carbon flux and erosion estimates at the catchment scale and assess the overall contribution to the carbon balance. We can then assess the connectivity of the bare patches to determine whether erosion can cascade within the catchment and present an ongoing problem for management. Based on this information and using the expert knowledge of our case partner we will develop a rule-based model for targeting restoration based on accessibility and the net erosion remediation / carbon sequestration that can be accrued
Our CASE partner will be the Peatlands Programme of the North Pennines AONB and our study will focus on the Moor House and Upper Teesdale NNR to take advantage of ongoing research projects and an unparalleled archive of historical data.
Our objectives are to:
1) Understand the distribution, size, and connectedness of bare peat hotspots and how this has changed in the historic past within a spectrum of upland peat catchments (North Pennines to Peak District).
2) Undertake field experiments to understand the dynamics of bare peat patches and how the size, shape and organisation of patches across the landscape changes and impacts on erosion.
3) Develop a management strategy for the restoration of erosion hotspots and devise techniques that will yield greatest benefit to the local community / economy.
4) Test possible interventions to target and restrict the impact of erosion hotspots.
To achieve these objectives we provide an original framework which utilises existing resources and expert knowledge:
1) Mapping - Using aerial imagery (existing bespoke photography, LiDAR and UAV) and ground-based dPGPS survey the size and distribution of erosion hotspots will be mapped; the connectivity of these patches will be determined; and graph theory will be used to produce metrics to describe the degree of landscape fragmentation. Surveys will be repeated for a historical series of photographs allowing us to study the development of patches through time. Detailed mapping will be used to construct a typology of bare patches.
2) Process Measurement - At several key sites, chosen using the typology produced in (1), monitoring will be undertaken on eroding margins, vegetating margins and core areas of bare peat. The significance of wind and water erosion will be measured alongside the local hydrology (water table profiles and flow partitioning) and carbon uptake / loss pathways. Our measurements will allow us to characterise the main components of the local carbon budget providing an assessment of patch-scale carbon dynamics and physical peat fluxes.
3) Modelling and targeting restoration - Based on (1) and (2) we will upscale results to produce carbon flux and erosion estimates at the catchment scale and assess the overall contribution to the carbon balance. We can then assess the connectivity of the bare patches to determine whether erosion can cascade within the catchment and present an ongoing problem for management. Based on this information and using the expert knowledge of our case partner we will develop a rule-based model for targeting restoration based on accessibility and the net erosion remediation / carbon sequestration that can be accrued
Our CASE partner will be the Peatlands Programme of the North Pennines AONB and our study will focus on the Moor House and Upper Teesdale NNR to take advantage of ongoing research projects and an unparalleled archive of historical data.
