Sprecher
Beschreibung
Wildfire risk is increasing worldwide, and the way global peatlands interact with fire has changed throughout the Anthropocene. The UK’s “peatscapes” (interconnected landscapes dominated by peat-forming ecosystems) are extensive, carbon-rich stores that support unique biodiversity, yet they are highly sensitive to environmental change. Anthropogenic impacts, such as land-use change and burning, have driven widespread degradation, making peatlands increasingly vulnerable to fire. Increased fire frequency, together with the impacts of climate change, threatens to alter peat structure and hydrological function and may even transform peatlands into carbon sources, with consequences persisting for centuries. As the UK’s peatscapes become increasingly marginal under climate change, a new understanding of how they have responded to past fire events and long-term environmental pressures is valuable for understanding their future resilience.
This research is addressing questions about peatland resilience to fire by generating new multiproxy knowledge of peatland recovery using palaeoecological techniques applied to peat cores in three UK landscapes: Dartmoor, the Peak District, and the Flow Country. This will be combined with earth observation data collected at annual scales to observe changing peatland relationships with fire prior to and during the Anthropocene under different preconditions. Outputs will enable comparisons between regions with differing vegetation, fire histories, and land-use legacies to determine why peatlands vary in recovery dynamics and vulnerability to changing climate and fire activity. The application of Fourier-Transform Infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy to macro-charcoal will be used, for the first time in UK peatlands, to characterise natural and anthropogenic fire events.