What is a blanket bog?

Blanket bog habitats form on moorland areas, at the top of hills where it is cool and wet. These conditions mean that vegetation is slow to break down and instead builds up as a layer of black matter, otherwise known as peat. These peat bogs take thousands of years to form and support amazing ecosystems, including incredible colourful mosses, unique insects, rare birds and even carnivorous plants.

Why is this habitat important?

Most of the UK’s blanket bogs are found in the north west of Britain, from the south Pennines up to the top of Scotland. In total, the UK has 15% of the world's blanket peat, which, because peat is essentially semi-decomposed plant matter, represents a huge carbon store: more carbon is stored in UK peat than in a combination of all the forests in Britain and France combined!

When these habitats are healthy, and peat is actively forming, they are building up carbon, so as well as being rare and threatened habitats for a wealth of wildlife, peat bogs also have an important role to play in helping to combat climate change.

What is the problem?

Very few blanket bogs in England and Wales are in good condition, especially in areas like the Peak District with warmer temperatures and dryer weather. Over the years they have been overgrazed, burned by wildfire or drained for agriculture. The Peak District’s moorlands also suffered from pollution throughout the industrial revolution, when sulphur from factories in nearby cities like Manchester and Sheffield landed on the hills, killed off the important moss species and acidified the soils.

The main peat-forming plants, species of Sphagnum or bog moss, are dependent on waterlogged conditions and freedom from disturbance. The damaging factors listed above mean that the surface of the bog becomes disturbed and bare, further peat formation is halted, and without a dense mat of protective vegetation the underlying peat becomes exposed and starts to erode and form gullies.

You can see this erosion in action up on Kinder Scout. Instead of healthy moorland habitats, across the Kinder plateau you can see acres of bare peat and deep gullies running across it, often eroded right through the peat layer and down to the underlying bedrock.

There are a range of issues associated with this erosion:

• Water quality
  When it rains, water washes huge amounts of peat down these gullies, where it ends up in water catchments downstream. Not only is this a loss of carbon, it also creates problems with our drinking water, costing water companies thousands of pounds to clear up to make it safe to drink.
• Flash flooding
  Layers of boggy vegetation growing on the blanket peat help to slow the movement of water as it flows from the hills. Without the plants and mosses, water flows from the hills more quickly, and heavy rainfall can cause flash floods downstream. With rainfall predicted to become heavier with climate change, this is likely to become a bigger problem into the future.
• Carbon loss
  Eroding blanket bogs are losing carbon, with peat washing off the hill. A vegetated surface also helps to keep the peat wet, but when it is exposed and gullied, the peat dries out and starts to oxidise - releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. Each hectare of oxidising peat is equivalent to the vehicle emission from 200,000 km of travel. The oxidising carbon from the eroding peat on the National Trust’s High Peak Estate ALONE is equivalent to 270 million km of travel each year!
• Wildfire
  Dry moorlands are also more susceptible to wildfire, which can be a huge risk in hot summers, and incredibly damaging to the blanket bog since peat is a fuel source. A bad fire can burn for days or weeks, take huge resources to put out and is obviously destructive to the plant and animal species living on the moors.
• Habitat and landscape loss
  The Peak District is a special place for wildlife and for visitors, and Kinder Scout is an iconic hill, as a wilderness area to relax and escape the pressures of urban life. Its landscape value has been damaged, changing its natural state from a healthy and diverse moorland habitat, to a bare and eroding landscape.

What are we doing about it?

The National Trust is working to reverse the erosion and wildlife loss of out blanket bogs across the Dark Peak estate by using a range of moorland restoration techniques. New grant funding for Kinder Scout means that we can now focus our attentions on large-scale restoration works up on the Kinder plateau Ñ some of the worst eroded blanket bog in the Peak District. It will take several years to reverse the damage done, but by giving nature a helping hand we hope to eventually restore what are now bare and eroding areas to a moorland wilderness once again. In doing so, we’ll be saving the remaining carbon store and hopefully encouraging bog mosses back to the hills, to start building up peat so the habitat can function as a valuable carbon sink once again.

How will we achieve this?

The following range of tried and tested methods will be used to restore Kinder Scout:

• Gully blocking
  Eroding gullies across the Kinder plateau will be blocked with stone, timber, plastic piling or overlap fencing dams, helping to raise the water table and rewet the peat. These dams slow the flow of water from the hill and encourage peat silt to build up behind them, which can then start to revegetate.

• Brash spreading
  Heather is cut, chopped and spread across bare peat areas, acting as a ‘mulch’ to stabilise the soils and introduce heather seed. This stops the peat blowing or washing away and makes it easier to seed or plant into the soils. Brash dropped in bags on Kinder Volunteers Spreading Heather Brash Regeneration of Heather after Spreading

• Plug planting
  Moorland plant species such as cottongrass are planted in key areas to help them gain a foothold and spread, stabilising the soil and encouraging revegetation. Cottongrass likes the wet, peaty conditions and is a good species to plant behind the gully dams to help to restore the eroding gullies. Cotton grass planting on Kinder Children Planting Cotton Grass Finished Planting
• Lime, fertiliser, grass and heather seed applications
  Bare peat is very acidic and nutrient poor, making it difficult for many species to get a foothold. Lime is therefore added to the ground (spread aerially by a helicopter) to raise the pH, followed by fertiliser to increase the fertility of the peat. This improves conditions for grasses and heather species, which are aerially sown. These seeds grow, creating a covering of vegetation which holds the peat together and stops erosion, stabilising the surface to allow moorland species to start to come back again. The grass growth resulting from the use of this technique would attract sheep from all around so keeping Kinder stock free is integral to this working properly!

• Sphagnum reintroduction
  Trials are currently underway into the reintroduction of Sphagnum moss. The hope is that once conditions are suitable, with the ground being wetter, and moorland plant species re-establishing, Sphagnum could also be reintroduced and encouraged to spread. This is a key bog moss, essential to a healthy blanket bog in building up peat. It needs a helping hand in the Peak District, mainly due to the history of pollution which has reduced the coverage and diversity of the Sphagnum species seen here.
• Grazing management
  In order to give these techniques a chance of working, and Kinder’s blanket bog the best chance of recovery, it is essential that the pressures of livestock grazing the vegetation are kept to a minimum. This is why the National Trust are erecting a temporary fence to restrict the movement of sheep across the sensitive plateau while this work is underway.