Hannah Lehnhart Barnett

I am a NERC funded PhD student based at the School of Environmental Sciences and the Environmental Change research group at the University of Liverpool, undertaking a CASE studentship with the Forestry Commission. My research focuses on the post-forestry restoration of May Moss, a blanket bog and SSSI in the North York Moors, and the impact of its restoration on the bog’s capacity to alleviate flooding and sequester carbon from the atmosphere.

Blanket bogs, and other peatlands, store approximately a third of the global terrestrial carbon stock and can act as both sinks and sources of greenhouse gases. These moorlands also form a significant component of the upland hydrological cycle, with the capacity to alleviate flooding during high intensity rainfall events. In many parts of the UK, peatlands are facing decline owing to widespread peat extraction, agriculture, commercial forestry and erosion, as well as changing temperature and rainfall regimes associated with climate change. The development of best methods for peat moorland restoration depends on an accurate assessment of peatland carbon exchanges and a quantification of the impact of present restorative measures.

In 2006-8, the Forestry Commission had an Enriching Nature (SITA-trust) funded programme facilitating the large-scale removal of forestry from the upland mire, May Moss (Yorkshire). May Moss, at 150ha, is the largest intact upland blanket mire in eastern England and comprises two linked watershed basins with peat in excess of 5 metres in thickness. Since 2008, data have been collected on the hydrology and micrometeorology from both the intact and restoring sites of May Moss. For my PhD, I will use this growing dataset and collect additional carbon exchange data in order to develop a semi-empirical process-based peat carbon and hydrological (run-off) model, testing hypotheses about ‘slow-the-flow’ and carbon sequestration measures in the context of managed peat moorlands. This work will link to, and complement, on-going practical research on best methods for peat restoration, but will provide a deeper analysis of the controlling environmental factors.