Monitoring is an important component of any conservation programme. By monitoring the changes that occur in the moorland ecosystems following the conservation works, we can determine how successful our intervention has been.

Our annual vegetation surveys involves teams of dedicated volunteers who cover all our restoration sites and collect data on the plant species and vegetation structure.

In addition to this, we have installed dozens of dipwells - a simple instrument used to measure water table - in order to assess whether the revegetation is helping to re-wet the blanket bog.

As a key aim of our work is to stabilise the bare peat, we use peat pins to determine the rate of erosion, and even the accumulation of sediment as it is captured and blocked by new vegetation and gully blocks.