Peatland Restoration Issues (Part 1)

This is a simplified version by someone who has limited knowledge of this highly complex and advanced topic of global importance.

There is an increasing number of other simplified versions available. Indeed, extensive research over the past 50-60 years has led to a huge knowledge base from field trials to scientific and academic journals and a renewed enthusiasm for peatlands. Since the emergence of global warming as a phenomenon, further generations of data and research outcomes have taken place. Subsequently and relatively recently, the renewed phenomenon of climate change further reinforced the previous research findings to a point where there is now, at any given time, a confusing mix of data from across the world. Peatlands in many of their guises exist or at least existed everywhere in the world, not just in the northern hemisphere temperate climate zones. Current classification appears to suggest at least 30 versions or variations of what constitutes peatlands, bogs, fens, moors, mires, swamps and wetlands and their relative importance in carbon sequestration to tackle climate CO2 emissions.

Boleysillagh Paludiculture Agroforestry Project is primarily concerned with degraded, cutaway, spent, marginal and exhausted peatlands in Ireland and their significance to not only meet the challenges posed by climate change but also to contribute to sustainable farming whilst restoring, enhancing and preserving such peatlands through agroforestry.

For those interested in developing their knowledge and understanding of peatlands much further than I can ever hope to impart, I would highly recommend the most reliable source namely, Research on Irish Peatlands at Peat Hub Ireland (Moll na bPortach), a project run by the University College Dublin funded under the Environmental Protection Agency Research Programme 2021-2030 and co-sponsored by the D.A.F.M. and the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications of the government of the Republic of Ireland.

Further afield, there are huge EU-led and funded research projects that are ongoing. Major projects are;

  • Care-Peat

  • REPEAT

  • ReVersal

  • WET HORIZONS

  • LIFE Peatlands and People: an Irish project with one of the main aims being to bring about cultural change and public perception of peatlands in Ireland.

*So – what’s the fuss all about? After all, get some diggers into bogs, block drains and flood the lot of them and the job’s good as done? Perhaps even incorporate a bit of Sphagnum moss and viola bogs restored, carbon sequestration done. If only things were that simple. Throwing huge sums of tax dollars into a bottomless pit does not really solve such problems. So peatland restoration is seriously complex, and at Boleysillagh Farm, not only are we trying to restore our bog under such extremis, but also hoping and working towards creating a food forest – a contradiction some might say. And admittedly, they may well be right.

At the core of our work, one word basically determines it all – BIOGEOCHEMISTRY!

Put it simply, whilst water is right at the heart of the peatland restoration process, it is a catalyst rather than the main actor.

Bog restoration is complex in itself, where hydrology and environmental factors play a major role. But the main focus is on the biological, chemical and mechanical processes that have to be artificially introduced and maintained so that the carbon and nitrogen cycles, amongst others, are in sync. To put it simply, with the agroforestry approach we are employing in getting the balance right between locking in carbon to reduce environmental CO2 emissions by reducing heterotrophic decomposition and locking in fixed nitrogen for the opposite microbial autotrophic process. With the introduction of biomass and other materials from external sources (local farmers basically) to encourage bacterial and fungal ecology of the right kind in promoting biogeochemical processes, the problem of contamination with layers of peat-forming vegetation mixing with non-peat-forming vegetation requires constant work.

Hence, this sort of complex trials for bog restoration and enhancement in tandem with food production for humans, animals as well as wildlife through agroforestry, AND achieve a form of balance within shifting biogeochemistry variables is quite difficult in Ireland.

In layman’s terms, we needed to flood the bog to encourage peat-forming vegetation so that carbon is stored in the bog to meet climate change challenges, amongst other noble goals, whilst oppositely, planting hundreds of varieties of plants, none of which normatively can survive, let alone achieve their genetic potential in a flooded wetland. No plants can do that. Hence, the cultivar trials focus on edible crops like fruit and nuts. That basically has been our job over the past 6 years.

Peatland Standard of Ireland

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GREEN RESTORATION IRELAND Brochure

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Molinia and Greenhouse Gas Fluxes

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C+N Cycles and Molinia

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