What is the Great North Bog?
The Great North Bog coalition brings together the North Pennines National Landscape team, Yorkshire Peat Partnership, Moors for the Future Partnership, Northumberland Peat Partnership, Cumbria Peat Partnership and Lancashire Peat Partnership to protect and restore northern England’s upland peatlands.
It is home to around 92% of the upland peat in England which, storing 400 million tonnes of carbon and providing a broad range of ecosystem services. Located in northern England, the Great North Bog includes four National Parks , (Peak District, Yorkshire Dales, North York Moors, Northumberland and Lake District) and three National Landscapes (Nidderdale, Forest of Bowland, North Pennines).
Together these successful peatland restoration organisations are taking urgent action to conserve and restore our peatlands, contributing significantly to the UK’s climate and carbon sequestration targets.
What are the challenges?
The blanket bogs across the Great North Bog have been heavily degraded as a result of human activity that includes pollution, burning, artificial drainage, livestock grazing and afforestation.
The WaterLANDS UK team is supporting the Great North Bog coalition to develop the processes required to deliver restoration at scale. This includes support around sustainable funding and governance, community engagement, developing the science behind restoration, capacity building across the sector, learning from best practices throughout the UK and Europe and working in partnership with regional and national stakeholders to respond to and to influence policy.
Fleet Moss
Fleet Moss in Yorkshire was arguably one of the most damaged blanket bog sites in North Yorkshire, with significant areas of bare and eroding peat and extensive networks of gullies and drainage ditches. Yorkshire Peat Partnership has transformed the area through a multi-year restoration programme. Initial efforts focussed on bringing the water-table up to the surface through gully and ditch blocking. Hag reprofiling, revegetation with bog plants such as sphagnum moss and bare peat protection with brash and geotextiles were then undertaken to prevent erosion and encourage revegetation of the site erosion. Since restoration, increased vegetation has brought ‘colour’ back to the site and the changes have been remarkable. The site is an excellent showcase of what restoration can achieve.
Palaeoecology - a useful tool for peatland restoration
Dr Antony Blundell, senior researcher at University of Leeds teamed up with Yorkshire Peat Partnership to run a workshop on Keighley Moor to demonstrate how evidence gained from palaeoecology (the study of vegetation and organisms and their interactions with past environments) - across the last 10,000 years in this instance, could be used as a tool to help restoration and inform peatland management.
A four-year study by Dr Antony Blundell, Martin Gilpin (senior research technician) and National Trust volunteers has revealed that more than a million tonnes of carbon are stored in Marsden Moor, in West Yorkshire – equivalent to the annual emissions released by one million cars. Together collaborators have surveyed peat depths and recorded some stratigraphy (records of different peat layers and their constituents) to estimate total peat volume and mass of carbon that is presently stored on the estate and to gain greater insights as to the sites historical development. On Bog Day Antony joined a public event at Marden Moor, organised by the National Trust, to raise awareness about the benefits of peatland and help members of the public gain a greater appreciation for their local environment.
- A series of site visits have been held across the Great North Bog to bring together staff from across the six delivery partnerships to share knowledge and approaches to restoration and monitoring and look at the various techniques that have been used for the site’s restoration.
- A two-day event was held at Moss Peteral, a working farm in Northumberland, to discuss what is important to land managers when managing their landscape and options for peatlands restoration. The event was organised by the Northumberland Peat Partnership, supported by members of the WaterLANDS UK team to help start ongoing two-way conversations with different types of land managers and gain a mutual understanding. Participants were asked to discuss the challenges, benefits - such as income generation for farms and opportunities for a restoration plan.
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