High tech helping hands to restore peatlands

Millions of pounds is being invested in peat restoration across the UK’s northern uplands with conservationists deploying the very latest technology to maximise success rates in the Forest of Bowland’s precious peatlands.

Peatlands are at the heart of the UK’s climate change mitigation strategy as pristine peat locks in millions of tonnes of carbon – around eight times as much as woodland. Healthy peatlands also absorb heavy rainfall and hold it on the hilltops – slowing the flow into the rivers and preventing flooding in the valleys.

In the Forest of Bowland, 16,000 hectares of uplands are protected under the Bowland Fells SSSI/SPA, much of which is made up of deep peat and peaty soils. Large areas of peatlands – both in Bowland and nationally – require restoration work to return their ecological function. Last year, thanks to Government funding, work started on restoring 160 hectares – equivalent to 200 football pitches.

The work is part of wider project to restore peatlands on a regional scale through the Great North Bog – a landscape-scale restoration and conservation project stretching across nearly 700,000 hectares of peatland soils in the protected landscapes of northern England.

Highly detailed, current satellite and aerial imagery is making mapping and monitoring actively eroding peatlands more accurate, whilst precise GPS satellite tracking enables pinpoint targeting of proposed restoration interventions. Drones are being used to capture the scale and progress of restoration works, indicating how the restoration is taking and allowing early identification of any places where it isn’t, so this can be addressed at the earliest opportunity.

To save time and labour, helicopters are employed to fly in the materials required to restore the more remote expanses of peat, minimising the use of tracked vehicles to carry heavy loads over the fragile peatbog – which would result in more damage to the habitat than would be addressed by the restoration work in the first place. Once the restoration work is complete, drones are again deployed to survey the area to monitor progress in addition to land-based surveys on foot.

Forest of Bowland Peatlands Officer Dominic Hartley said: “It may be expensive, but making use of this sort of technology significantly increases the precision and efficiency of the work we are doing.  

“Using a combination of drones, digital mapping systems and GPS technology accurate to around 20cm to identify eroded areas enables us to create a very precise project map, targeting the most degraded peat and guiding the contractors doing the restoration work to the priority areas. Working in this way, ensures that interventions are targeted with pinpoint accuracy and effectiveness.”

Flying in peat restoration materials high up in the Forest of Bowland Fells.

Posted
16th December 2024
in News