Peatlands are Important global carbon stores but are also sensitive climatically controlled ecosystems dependent on the maintenance of high water tables. Consequently they are under threat in warmer drier future climate conditions. The natural resilience of peatland systems and the potential to engineer resilience through peatland restoration are therefore important …
Concerns are mounting at the increasing loss of economically important native and introduced UK tree species to fungal diseases. Key examples are ash dieback in European ash and red band needle blight in Scots pine from the respective fungal disease causing ascomycetes, Chalara fraxinea and Dothistroma septosporum. Identification of disease …
Peatlands are under threat from land management, anthropogenic pollution and climate change. These factors are implicated in severe degradation of ombrotrophic peatlands in the Southern Pennines of northern England. Significant areas of unconsolidated bare peat are both highly vulnerable to peat erosion and resistant to natural re-vegetation. Restoration efforts during …
The UK hosts 15-19% of global upland ombrotrophic (rain fed) peatlands that are estimated to store 3.2 billion tonnes of carbon and represent a critical upland habitat with regard to biodiversity and ecosystem services provision. Net production is dependent on an imbalance between growth of peat-forming Sphagnum mosses and microbial …
Upland peatlands receive the majority of their ecosystem inputs through precipitation, which delivers not only moisture but also atmospheric gases and particulates. Pristine peatlands are characterised by nutrient limitation, leading to the establishment of oligotrophic organism communities both above- and below-ground. Sphagnum mosses in particular thrive, and their presence promotes …
Soil is a non-renewable resource which sustains life and delivers countless beneficial ecosystem services that we need and take for granted. The microbial diversity of soil dwarfs above-ground plant diversity, but is intimately linked with it. Whilst macroscopic ecology is a well-developed discipline that supports our efforts to manage and …
Peatlands are under threat from land management, anthropogenic pollution and climate change. These factors are implicated in severe degradation of peatlands in the southern Pennines of northern England. Significant areas of unconsolidated bare peat are both highly vulnerable to peat erosion and resistant to natural re-vegetation. Restoration efforts during the …
Over 70% of upland peatlands in the Southern Pennines are degraded, with extensive areas of bare unconsolidated peat incised with networks of gullies often down to the bedrock. Land management, air pollution and climate change are implicated as major factors leading to loss of vegetation and susceptibility to erosion. Over …
No abstract available.
Impacts of degraded blanket bog restoration on culturable and non-culturable soil bacterial and fungal biodiversity and spatiality were assessed. Peat sampled from unvegetated peat areas and from 3 restored vegetation classes, remnant vegetation and grass dominated gullies were subjected to culturable microbial enumeration and rDNA based community profiling and pyrosequencing. …