The Peatland-ES-UK project now has additional funding and continues to contribute to policymaking. Andreas Heinemeyer writes about this, and the NERC-funded Highlight Topic project Ideal UK Fire of which he is a co-investigator.
The Peatland-ES-UK project has secured further funding and continues to feed its science into policy. The project leader, Professor Andreas Heinemeyer is a co-investigator on a £2.5M NERC-funded Highlight Topic project, Ideal UK Fire, led by the University of Birmingham.
As part of the 4-year project, the three Peatland-ES-UK sites will continue to be monitored for carbon fluxes to compare the carbon balance of alternative heather managements (burning, cutting and no management). The project’s findings are increasingly being considered by policymakers. This year it was discussed with the Climate Change Committee and the Defra minister Richard Benyon at an uplands management workshop in the Peak District, and with Edwin Poots - environment minister for Northern Ireland (DAERA). The study and some of its publications featured in a recent Nature Scot report on muirburn provided by the SRUC. Whilst the SRUC report acknowledged there is “no overall consensus as to the net impacts of muirburn on carbon budgets”, the report did not adequately consider the limitations of short-term studies on the impacts of management (which is of very limited use to inform overall management impacts).
A forthcoming 10-year report to be published in early 2023 will clarify this and other limitations. Additionally it will also touch on the need for long-term studies based on data as discussed in a video produced by the Game and WIldlife Conservation Trust (GWCT).
