Latest news with #peatlands
Fast Company
a day ago
- General
- Fast Company
The peat ban is coming. Will your favorite dram disappear with it?
The climate crisis upends life in countless ways large and small, including potentially ending one beloved 1,000-year-old tradition. Peated whiskies, flavored with decaying organic matter from bogs, could soon be a casualty of new regulations designed to protect peatlands – one of the Earth's most potent carbon sinks. In the U.K., the government is moving aggressively to end commercial uses of peat and protect peatlands. Long used in gardening as a rich source of compost, the practice is being abandoned as national bans on peat use take shape. When those gardening-focused bans are fully implemented, peat's role in the whisky industry – which historically accounted for just a sliver of peat use – will make up a much larger percentage of commercial peat usage. This week, a cluster of 10,000-year-old peatlands in England were designated as new national nature reserves. New legislation proposed earlier this year aims to extend bans on burning across peatlands, a last-ditch effort to restore the 80% of England's peat bogs that are currently considered degraded. The U.K. hosts 13% of the world's peat bogs, which comprise only 3% of the Earth's surface area but store nearly one third of its carbon. 'Our peatlands are this country's Amazon rainforest – home to our most precious wildlife, storing carbon and reducing flooding risk,' U.K. Nature minister Mary Creagh said. Whisky beyond peat While plenty of whiskies are peat-free, peat is the signature ingredient that creates the smoky, complex flavors that many whisky drinkers seek out. Peated whiskey has a reputation as an acquired taste, but it commands special respect in the industry for its depth of flavor and its link to traditional production methods in Scotland and Ireland. Peat comes into play when malted barley is dried with a kiln. Peat added to the flames produces thick smoke that then envelopes the grains, infusing them with layers of flavor drawn out of the earth itself. Pulling peat out of the peated whisky process would be a break with tradition, but one that would leave the industry much better adapted to a changing climate long-term. As other industries have moved away from peat, the search for alternatives is on. In gardening, coconut coir made from the fibrous material that covers coconuts is a popular choice. Wood shavings, rice hulls, leaf litter and kitchen waste compost are other options, though some you might prefer to not make themselves known to your palate at your next whisky tasting.
Irish Times
4 days ago
- Politics
- Irish Times
Climate Council warns against ‘dumb' proposal to allow forestry on peatlands
Controversial moves to introduce incentives for planting trees on peatlands will only increase carbon emissions, the Climate Change Advisory Council has warned. In its annual review of agriculture, land use and forestry, published on Wednesday, the council said: 'Urgent action and strengthened policy levers are required to incentivise increased tree planting to ensure Ireland's forestry sector does not become a source of greenhouse gas emissions.' The Government's forestry policy is not achieving planting levels needed to meet climate targets despite an overhaul in recent years, it stated. 'Current afforestation policy is inadequate to meet our future needs as tree-planting rates remain well below the target of 8,000 hectares per year.' In 2024 the State added just 1,573 hectares of new forest; the lowest number in nearly 80 years. READ MORE Minister of State Michael Healy-Rae has said it may be necessary to plant trees on deep peatlands to address timber shortages. But the independent advisory body has concluded that all evidence suggests 'this leads to significant carbon losses over time'. It is, therefore, 'essential that current constraints on afforestation on deep peat remain unchanged and are rigorously enforced', it said. Mr Healy-Rae told the Seanad in May that he and officials in the Department of Agriculture would look at planting trees on peatland in what would be a reversal of current restrictions. He suggested the ban on planting trees on deeper peatlands could result in a future shortage of timber, meaning a 'stupid' reliance on Scottish imports. [ Storm Éowyn's €500m toll on Irish forestry revealed by satellite imagery Opens in new window ] In response, leading climate scientist Prof Peter Thorne of Maynooth University, who is chair of the council's adaptation committee, said afforesting peatlands was 'environmental vandalism' and 'about the dumbest thing we can do' from the point of view of climate action. Commenting on the need for improved performance in the forestry sector, council chair Marie Donnelly said: 'What we have seen in the sector is a failure of policy, with schemes to incentivise more planting not delivering the results required. This has been exacerbated by damage to forests during the winter with Storms Darragh and Éowyn, which resulted in over 26,000 hectares damaged by windthrow.' There is a need for a policy from Government that will 'actively encourage afforestation in the areas most suited to planting'. The council highlighted the opportunity for the forestry sector to deliver modern methods of construction, notably expansion of timber frame construction with potential for a strong domestic market for locally-produced timber. This would reduce significant amounts of carbon, it said, given one cubic metre of timber replacing concrete and steel in construction saves 0.77 tonnes of CO2 emissions. Yet only 24 per cent of building construction in Ireland is timber, compared with more than 80 per cent in Finland, Scotland and Sweden. Building with timber is at cost parity with conventional construction systems. With emissions from agriculture having decreased by just 1.7 per cent in 2024 relative to 2023, and by 4.6 per cent relative to 2018, the council said an accelerated roll out of proven on-farm measures were required. With agriculture remaining Ireland's largest source of emissions, it called for 'deployment of methane-reducing manure additives and greater use of protected urea fertilisers', which reduce ammonia loss and greenhouse gases. [ The Irish Atlantic rainforest pulsing life back into the Beara peninsula Opens in new window ] Increasing diversification in farming is critical alongside scaling up biomethane production using anaerobic digesters, it said. 'Implementation of the national biomethane strategy has been piecemeal to date, leading to a worryingly low level of interest in progressing this mitigation option.' The Government needs to ensure all available instruments, including taxation, regulation and incentives, are in place to enable farmers to make necessary changes to on-farm practices. 'Diversification is vital for the long-term sustainability of the sector, and the Government should set annual targets for the roll out of diversification options including bioenergy, organic productions systems, expanded tillage and agroforestry with policies to support this,' Ms Donnelly said.
BBC News
06-07-2025
- Science
- BBC News
Toxic metals found in UK peatlands could pose health risk
"Cutting edge" research by a team at Queen's University Belfast (QUB) has found toxic heavy metals stored in peatlands across the say wildfires - and the effects of climate change - could see decades' worth of pollutants like lead, arsenic, mercury and cadmium, released into our water scientists say the findings make re-wetting and restoring peatlands even more vital, to protect environmental and human are well-known carbon sinks, locking away greenhouse gases in their watery depths. They have also been absorbing the industrial pollution that humans have been generating for two centuries. The QUB team, led by Professor Graeme Swindles, has been examining cores from across the UK, Ireland and further afield, as part of a global study with many other pollution has even been found in samples from the remote Northern Arctic."It's quite staggering to find such high levels in our peatlands that you think are these incredibly pristine places in many ways," said Prof Swindles."But no - they have been affected by our pollution." PhD student Ellie Purdy "jumped" at the chance to work on the project."It's basically just about how what we're doing is affecting the environment."And even though these contaminants were once stored in these peatlands they're now being released under climate warming," she said it is a cause of concern for the future. She has been looking specifically at cores from Ellesmere Island in the Canadian High Arctic. Finding heavy metal contamination in "an extremely remote area with little civilisation around", it has been "eye-opening" for her."It just shows how connected we are throughout the globe," she said. Peatlands cover around 12% of Northern Ireland. In good condition, they form new peat at a rate of just 1mm a more than 80% of them are in a poor or degraded state, largely due to burning or being drained for peat in the QUB labs evaluate how a changing climate might affect Richard Fewster has focused on the potential impact of three likely scenarios - a warming climate, wildfires and summer all three affect how peat behaves, burning has potentially the greatest impact. He said: "We're seeing that burning actually mobilises some of the metals within the peatland much more rapidly, in a sort of a 'big pulse' event early on in the experiment that we don't see in cores that are left intact.""So one of the really early findings that we have is that protecting our systems in a wet, stable, intact condition is really important for locking these peat metals, these pollutants, away in our peatlands and preventing them from being released," Dr Fewster said.A long-awaited peatlands strategy from the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs requires Executive draft Climate Action Plan says Northern Ireland "will have to dramatically increase its annual peatland restoration activity" to meet Climate Change Committee recommendations of restoring 10,000 hectares by 2027. At Garry Bog near Ballymoney in County Antrim, more than 3,000 dams have been created to block drains and raise the water table back peat here runs to a depth of at least nine metres, which means it has been forming for more than 9,000 years and sequestering carbon for all that Devenney from Ulster Wildlife has been leading the restoration work at the said peatlands are our most significant, most impactful, terrestrial carbon sinks."So the fact that we have 12% cover in Northern Ireland of peatlands - deep peat in a lot of cases that's greater than 50 centimetres - there's a huge scope of work that can be done."Northern Ireland has a big part to play in tackling climate change," Mr Devenney Swindles said the message from the work of his team in the lab at QUB could not be starker."It's really clear we need to ensure these peatlands are kept wet. We need to restore them, rehabilitate them, block drains."And we need to stop burning peatlands," he said.
Yahoo
19-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Arctic warming spurs growth of carbon-soaking peatlands
Arctic peatlands are expanding as the climate warms, new research showed Thursday, a change that could slow global heating in the near term but have the opposite effect in future. Peatlands are the largest terrestrial store of carbon, locking away twice as much heat-trapping CO2 from the atmosphere in their waterlogged soils as all the world's forests. These carbon-rich reservoirs, composed of partially decayed organic matter, only cover three percent of Earth's surface, and generally fade out in the far north, where harsh weather limits plant growth. But warmer temperatures caused by climate change have improved growing conditions for plants in the Arctic, and satellite data has shown a general "greening" of this frosty region. Using drones, satellite imagery and on-the-ground observations, an international team of scientists assessed peatlands in the European and Canadian Arctic to see if they had benefited from warmer climes. They found strong evidence that peatlands "have likely undergone lateral expansion over the last 40 years" in the Arctic, which is the fastest-warming region on Earth. "The permafrost thaws a little, provides a water source for vegetation, and surface vegetation recovers. In this study, we specifically see a lateral expansion," Michelle Garneau, a professor at the University of Quebec in Montreal, and co-author of the study, told AFP. The most marked change was observed where summer temperatures have risen the most, such as in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. "All these new vegetated surfaces that didn't exist three decades ago are currently actively absorbing carbon," Garneau added. How Arctic peatlands respond to climate change in future is "still highly uncertain", said the study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Communications Earth & Environment. Recent modelling suggests these northern peatlands "may become a carbon source from mid-century" as they dry out and permafrost thaws, the study said. They are also at risk from wildfires, which release masses of stored up carbon at once. "This means that in the short term, these expanding peatlands are a growing carbon sink in the Arctic," said study co-author Karen Anderson, a professor from the University of Exeter, which led the research. "But in the future, this could switch back, and this will happen because of higher temperatures and potentially things like fires," she told AFP. As peatlands expand, they also release methane, a potent greenhouse gas with far more heat-trapping capacity than CO2, though these emissions decline over time. "So while our study gives us some positive news, it does not detract from the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and stabilise our climate," said Anderson. jmi/np/jhb
The Guardian
15-06-2025
- General
- The Guardian
On Ireland's peat bogs: climate action clashes with tradition
Doreen King, the project manager of Bord na Móna's peatlands climate action scheme, and Mark McCorry, ecology manager, walk past a carbon flux monitor, in Ballynahown. Rewetting bogs 'is all about reducing the carbon emissions from the bare peatlands', says King King holds bog grass in a restored bogland, in Ballynahown. Bog grass, which holds in carbon, is a critical flora of peatlands A drone view shows the scars on the landscape of peat harvesting in Clonbullogue. Bord na Móna has been charged with trying to restore damaged bogs to curb the carbon emissions and allow natural ecosystems to restore themselves, eventually turning them back into carbon sinks A drone's view shows a stage of the rewetting process at Ballaghurt Bog where the grids are flooded with water to seal in the carbon emissions, near Clongawny View of a marked control square, set out before recording a carbon emission measurement at Ballycon Bog, in Mount Lucas. Degraded peatlands in Ireland emit the equivalent of 21.6m metric tons of CO2 each year, according to the 2022 UN report Johny Gorry uses a digging machine to cut away chunks of peat to put through a turf installation machine, in Clonbullogue. Contractors dig turf on behalf of plot owners, who then stack turf sods to dry and transport home to burn over the winter John Smyth, 69, squeezes freshly cut turf before stacking it up for drying over the summer months, in Mount Lucas. Smyth, like many households, uses turf to heat and fuel his house. A single harvest can heat a home for a year for less than €1,000 without the stress of energy bills Bog cotton, or common cottonsedge in Clonydonnin Bog, a cutaway bog, in Ballynahown. Ireland's bogs were formed over thousands of years as decaying plants formed a thick layer of peat in wetland areas As the peat stacking process starts in Clonbullogue, freshly cut turf is stacked into a pyramid shape, known locally as a foot, to help with the drying process. Wooden posts mark where each person's plot of turf begins Willie Flynn (left), 74, and Michael Morrissey (right), 72, load dried turf cut from a patch they rented for the year to bring home to use for heating, in Clonbullogue. The turf is cut into sods by a tractor and is then 'footed' – stacked by hand to dry over several weeks - before being transported home for fuel John Smyth, 69, drinks a cup of tea as he looks out of the window of his house at sunset, in Mount Lucas. Smyth heats his home with peat turf harvested from a bog. 'I can never see the day that we won't need turf,' he says. 'I'm going to keep it going for as long as I can, as long as turf is available' A drone's view shows turf from Derryrush bog left out to dry after being harvested from the blanket bog. The shadow of the now late Jim Bracken, then 92, seen in the hearth of the outdoor living room of his friend, Willie Pilkington, 79, as they catch up over a cup tea made on a turf fire. About 68,000 households in Ireland were still dependent on turf for home heating in 2022, down from 90,000 in 2011, according to census data Smyth chops up firewood from a tree that fell after Storm Éowyn, in Mount Lucas. Ireland has introduced strict rules on the burning of solid fuels. Wood must be dried so it has a moisture content of less than 25%. Harry Kelly, a carbon technician with Bord na Móna, takes a photo on a makeshift boardwalk among the reeds at Ballycon Bog, in Mount Lucas. Bord na Móna permanently ceased harvesting peat on its lands in 2021 and now focuses on renewable energy, recycling, peatland restoration A drone's view shows the rehabilitated Ballycon Bog, some 20 years after rewetting, in Mount Lucas. High rainfall and poor drainage causes blanket bogs to develop over hundreds of years on large expanses of land, supporting rich biodiversity, including rare plants and vulnerable species A person stands on top of Diamond Hill in the Connemara national park, which is surrounded by a protected blanket bog found in lowlands of mountainous regions with a rainy climate, in Letterfrack Smyth stacks freshly cut turf into a pyramid shape, or foot, which helps the peat dry over the summer months, in Clonbullogue Bracken and Smyth drink tea made using peat turf, in Rhode. Open turf fires have long lent a unique peaty smell to homes and pubs across rural Ireland Doreen King holds sphagnum moss in a restored bogland, in Ballynahown. Raised bogs need certain types of mosses, collectively known as sphagnum, to grow in order for peat to form, according to Bord na Móna A drone's view shows the early stages of the rewetting process at Ballaghurt Bog, near Clongawny. Bord na Móna has been charged with trying to 'rewet' the bogs to curb the carbon emissions, allowing natural ecosystems to restore themselves, eventually turning them back into carbon sinks A drone's view shows secondary school students stacking freshly cut turf on a raised bog to help the peat dry over the summer months, in Clonbullogue Mark McCorry, an ecology manager with Bord na Móna, searches for a family of egrets that have begun nesting in the rehabilitated cutaway Boora Bog, near Glen Lower. 'In the longer term, we will see more and more of those bogs, you know, switching back to sinks for carbon,' McCorry says
