Sustainable management of UK lowland peatlands

The Cambridgeshire Fens contains extensively drained lowland peatland lsoils, covering 4,000 km2 and including areas for crop production and grazing, ditches and rivers, unproductive highly degraded peat, small reserves of deeper peat, and areas under active restoration. UK lowland peatlands have an important role in climate regulation, acting as both sources and sinks for GHGs.

Intact peatlands are an important carbon store, but degraded peatlands now account for 3.5% of total UK GHG emissions, resulting in substantial greenhouse gas footprints for food produced in the fens.

Peat loss is compromising long-term productivity and increasing vulnerability to climate-related risks and low levels of resilience for both agricultural production and for farmer livelihoods.

There is thus an urgent need for solutions to improve agricultural sustainability, identify areas suitable for restoration or alternative management, and to understand how changes in management will translate across supply chains.

Potential strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions range from the adoption of more sustainable grazing, crop, soil and water management practices which will reduce the rates of peat erosion, to wetland crop production (paludiculture), and restoration.

However, there is a lack of information on peatland distribution, depth and carbon storage to identify optimal areas for management pathways, and no understanding of how resultant changes in food production to achieve UK Net Zero targets will translate across supply chains. This project will address these challenges.