Restoration of blanket peatlands

Restoration of blanket peatlands.

There is concern that ecosystem services provided by blanket peatlands have come under threat due to increasing degradation. Blanket peatlands are subject to a wide range of drivers of degradation and are topographically variable. As a result, many degradation forms can develop, including those resulting from eroding artificial drainage, incising gullies and areas of bare peat. Many degraded bl...

Mitigating wildfire carbon loss in managed northern peatlands through restoration

Northern peatlands can emit large amounts of carbon and harmful smoke pollution during a wildfire. Of particular concern are drained and mined peatlands, where management practices destabilize an array of ecohydrological feedbacks, moss traits and peat properties that moderate water and carbon losses in natural peatlands. Our results demonstrate that drained and mined peatlands in Canada and no...

Sediment and particulate carbon removal by pipe erosion increase over time in blanket peatlands as a consequence of land drainage

[1] Land drainage is common in peatlands. Artificially drained blanket peat catchments have been shown to have a significantly greater soil pipe density than intact catchments. This paper investigates the role of surface land drains in the enhancement of soil piping in blanket peats. The density of piping was found to significantly increase in a linear fashion with the age of the drainage. Thir...

Recovery of plant communities after ecological restoration of forestry‐drained peatlands

Ecological restoration is expected to reverse the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Due to the low number of well-replicated field studies, the extent to which restoration recovers plant communities, and the factors underlying possible shortcomings, are not well understood even in medium term. We compared the plant community composition of 38 sites comprising pristine, forestry-drain...

Impacts of restoration of forestry-drained peatlands on nutrient and organic carbon exports and methane dynamics