We are monitoring the impact of our conservation work to evaluate its effects and determine whether we are achieving our aims. We’re measuring the effects of the work on a variety of outcomes. Our aim is to see benefits to local communities (plant diversity, water quality, flood risk mitigation) as well as to wider global concerns (carbon balance and climate change).
These beneficial effects, known as ecosystem services, are being monitored on four experimental sites across the Peak District and South Pennines SAC.
The work provides a learning opportunity, enabling us to establish and share evidence-based land management best practice with other land managers and conservationists.
The four demonstration sites are all classified as ‘degraded’ blanket bog habitat. Each has a different starting state:
Work on the three sites that are dominated by a single species of vegetation mainly involves planting sphagnum moss to diversify the mix of vegetation. On the heather-dominated site we are also investigating the further impact which gully blocking has when combined with vegetation diversification.
Monitoring of these benefits on each of the sites occurs in control and treatment mini-catchments (each one is roughly the same size as a football pitch) before and after, the conservation work is carried out. This lets us look at the natural differences between the mini-catchments before conservation work takes place so that we can tell exactly what impact our conservation work has. We measure changes to the following outcomes:
Monitoring biodiversity and ecosystem services at these four field laboratories helps us to evaluate the effects of our work and determine whether we are achieving our aims. It also provides a learning opportunity enabling us to establish and share evidence-based land management best practice with other land managers and conservationists.
Conservation work on the bare peat site is complex, involving stabilisation, nutrient enrichment, seeding, liming and planting plugs that contain 12 different species of sphagnum moss