The PCARB project, running from 2023 until 2027, is an assessment of how past climate changes have influenced carbon accumulation by Irish blanket bogs.

 

The work has three objectives:

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The first objective is to track the past interactions between climate variability, vegetation and carbon accumulation by blanket bogs. Three sediment cores will be sampled from Mountain, Upland and Atlantic blanket bogs. Utilising a suite of approaches, multi-millennial records of past peat decomposition, vegetation, bog surface wetness and carbon accumulation will be developed for each site. This will allow an assessment of how climate changes alter peatland surface environments and carbon sequestration over timescales of decades to millennia.

 

The second objective is to quantify the relationship between key bioclimatic variables and long-term carbon accumulation in blanket bogs. We are sampling cores from thirty blanket bog sites across Ireland from a range of elevations and across a gradient of key bioclimatic indicators (reflecting moisture and temperature gradients). Records of carbon accumulation during the last millennium (850-1850 AD) will then be developed at each site and using modern climate averages, the relationship between climate variables and carbon accumulation will be assessed.

 

The third objective is to assess the future long-term response of carbon accumulation in blanket bogs to climate change. Using the established relationship between carbon accumulation and bioclimatic variables from Objective 2, as well as the modelled future extent of blanket bogs with climate change, the amount and distribution of future carbon accumulation will be estimated.   

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This research will be done by the P.I. Dr Lisa Orme, a postdoctoral researcher TBC and a PhD student TBC.

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