DRYPEAT

Project Title: DRYPEAT (Deuterium-excess reconstruction to yield peatland evaporation, aridity, and transpiration) 

PI: Dr Pete D. Akers 

Research Team: Dr Jo Hanson, Zenobia Kusi-Afrakoma 

Funders: Research Ireland 22/FFP-P/11490 

Duration: 01 Aug 2024 – 31 Jul 2028 

Summary: Mountain blanket bogs are self-sustaining waterlogged wetland ecosystems that cover vast areas of Irish uplands and serve as the sources for many of Irelands major rivers. The thick layers of peat and dense vegetation slow runoff, reduce evaporation, and store water through drier periods, but increasing drought and aridity are stressing this resilient system. By reconstructing a history of the past droughts that the bogs in the Wicklow Mountains have survived, DRYPEAT aims to better constrain the potential tipping point of aridity where blanket bog ecosystems will collapse and fail to recover. Drought produces identifiable isotopic signals in bog water that is incorporated by plants growing in the bog and then preserved for thousands of years as the dead plants accumulate into peat. By combining modern bog hydrology and ecology monitoring with analysis of peat cores taken from Wicklow bogs, we will produce a first of its kind environmental history of drought for the region. We can then compare the extremeness of these past droughts to droughts we are seeing today and those projected under future global warming to gain better context for where the blanket bog collapse tipping point may lie. Through this new knowledge of past bog resilience to drought and the project’s development of a new biogeochemical way to track water stress in bog plants, we aim to improve the resilience of blanket bogs against future climate changes and inform bog restoration efforts with quantifiable data. 

Image caption: DRYPEAT: Sampling the modern blanket bog plants for isotopic composition at the Luggala Estate, Wicklow Mountains.