Not just for the trees

Abstract

Carbon Storage The upland bogs, grasslands, and heath of the United Kingdom are iconic for their scenic beauty and distinctive natural history. They are also valuable because their vegetation and top 30 centimeters of soil store roughly 30% of the country's carbon on 20% of its land area, much more than the country's existing woodlands. Field et al. estimate that these areas currently sequester 8 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents annually by photosynthesis. However, many of these areas have been degraded by land management practices that favor livestock grazing and game animals, such as burning and deep draining, and damage to peat can trigger carbon emissions. The authors estimate that if restored to functioning and diverse ecosystems, the sequestration capacity of these special habitats could be increased by an extra 6 to 7 gigatons. The main obstacle to this is the complexity of land tenure and land-use culture in the United Kingdom. Biol. Conserv. 248 , 108619 (2020).