EGS Seminar – Tuesday 19th March 2013

Tuesday 19th March 2013, Room E419, 4th floor, John Dalton East Building, from 1.00-2.00pm.


Sphagnum in the Southern Pennines

Angus Rosenburgh, MMU

The blanket bogs of the Southern Pennines are the most degraded peatlands in the UK. A history of industrial pollution, poor land management and wildfire has devastated these upland ecosystems. Sensitive species were all but eradicated from these areas, and in the most severe cases, all vegetation was lost leaving large areas of bare and actively eroding peat. Over the last 50 years or so, conditions have steadily improved: reduced industrial activity, tighter emission regulations and environmental stewardship subsidies are all significant factors.
Sphagnum is a keystone species, providing the very fabric and functioning of these blanket bogs. Its susceptibility to pollution led to widespread decline over a landscape it once dominated. Amid the improving environmental conditions of recent decades, there has been a notable increase in both Sphagnum cover and diversity.
This work aims to characterise the differences between conditions of the degraded blanket peats of the Southern Pennines and those of more pristine mires from across the UK, identifying those biogeochemical factors that influence the vegetation, and integrating this into current and on-going restoration works.