Ecosystem stocks and tipping points in UK blanket peatlands

• Project Dates: 2016 - 2018
• Project Leader: Mark Reed
• Sponsors: NERC Valuing Nature Programme

Researchers from Newcastle and Leeds universities, the Scottish Association for Marine Science, the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and the British Trust for Ornithology have been awarded almost half a million pounds by the Natural Environment Research Council’s Valuing Nature Programme to investigate ecosystems that are moving towards “tipping points” where they could rapidly collapse, no longer providing society with important services. 

Professor Mark Reed, Professor of Socio-Technical Innovation at Newcastle University will be leading the research and the focus will be on bogs. These important resources currently provide most of the UK’s drinking water and protect our climate by locking up carbon within the peat.  There is a danger that climate change and current land management practices may lead of rapid and costly loss of water quality and biodiversity, while contributing towards further climate change. 

Contacts: mark.reed@ncl.ac.uk; Tel 07538 082343