Research: Care-Peat
Restoring the carbon storage capacity of peatlands throughout North West Europe.
Summary
Research summary
- January 2019 - December 2023
- EU Funding €4.22m. Total budget €7.03m’
Care-Peat is an Interreg North-West Europe project to reduce carbon emissions and restore the carbon storage capacity of peatlands.
A partnership of universities and conservation groups in Belgium, France, Ireland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom to test innovative technologies and new restoration and carbon measurement techniques.
The nature organisations are helping landowners to restore peatlands in seven pilot sites. Different techniques are used on each site to evaluate potential carbon savings, including manual management and growing additional peat moss.
University partners are developing and testing new equipment, methods and models to predict carbon flows, including the use of drones and satellites to guide restoration and provide input for carbon models. Researchers will also publish a decision tool and models for evaluating the carbon storage potential of the different techniques - helping conservationists find appropriate management measures.
Specialist restoration companies are also involved, supporting local and regional stakeholders to maximise the impact of the pilots.
Interreg NWE awarded the project additional funding in 2021 to involve new partners, including for the first time farmers, and apply its findings to new pilot sites. The funding is also being used to develop a new method for assessing greenhouse gas emissions from peatlands, which can be used across Europe.
By 2023, the project aims to prevent 8137 tonnes of carbon emissions being lost each year from the seven pilot sites.
Lessons learned from the project will be shared with nature and conservation groups throughout North-West Europe to help restore additional peatlands.
Peatland and carbon emissions
Tackling the climate change through peatland restoration
Peatlands play an important role in the fight against the global climate crisis.
In the northern hemisphere, they count for up to five per cent of total land area and lock away around a third of the worldwide store of carbon in the soil.
But when peatlands are drained or degraded, that stored carbon is released as greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Global greenhouse gas emissions from drained organic soils are twice that from aviation - making it essential to prevent further degradation and encourage more recovery of our remaining peatlands.
Team
Research team
Lead researcher
- Dr Chris Field, for Manchester Met
Collaborating with:
- Natuurpunt Beheer vzw – lead partner
- Eurosite
- Université d’Orléans
- National University of Ireland Galway
- Centre National de La Recherche Scientifique
- Lancashire Wildlife Trust
- North Wales Wildlife Trust
- Beadamoss®
- Vereniging Natuurmonumenten
- Van Hall Larenstein University of Applied Sciences
- Université de Rennes 1
Funding
With funding from
Interreg North-West Europe
Contact
Contact us
For general enquiries, please contact Environmental Change research group leads Dr Elias Symeonakis and Dr Martin Sullivan.
