Report show importance of Flow Country's peat stores
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The importance of the Flow Country of Caithness and Sutherland has been highlighted by a new report.
Preserving the world's peatlands – and the vast carbon stores they contain – is vital to limiting climate change, researchers say.
The study, led by the University of Exeter and Texas A&M University, examines peatland losses over human history and predicts these will be "amplified" in the future.
Peatlands are expected to shift from an overall "sink" – absorbing carbon – to a source this century, primarily due to human impacts across the tropics, and the study warns more than 100 billion tons of carbon could be released by 2100, although uncertainties remain large.
The Flow Country has moved an important step closer in joining the Taj Mahal in India, the Grand Canyon in the USA, Machu Pichu in Peru and the Great Barrier Reef in Australia in becoming a Unesco World Heritage Site.
The UK government’s department of digital, culture, media and sport (DCMS) in the summer gave its backing to the Peatlands Partnership’s World Heritage Site working group to go ahead with developing the nomination of the Flow Country to Unesco for World Heritage Site status.
About 10 per cent of the UK is peatland. Peatlands are currently excluded from the main Earth System Models used for climate change projections – something the researchers say must be urgently addressed.
"Peatlands contain more carbon than all the world's forests and, like many forests, their future is uncertain," said Professor Angela Gallego-Sala, of Exeter's Global Systems Institute.
"Peatlands are vulnerable to climate change impacts such as increased risk of wildfires and droughts, the thawing of permafrost and rising sea levels.
"However, the main threats to peatlands are more direct – particularly destruction by humans to create agricultural land, so the future of peatlands is very much in our hands."
Professor Gallego-Sala says peatlands have been "overlooked" in some climate models because they are seen as "inert" – neither absorbing nor emitting carbon at a rapid rate when left alone.
This exclusion from models makes it hard to estimate future changes, so the study combined existing research with survey estimates from 44 leading peatland experts.
Based on this, it estimates total carbon loss from 2020-2100 at 104 billion tons.
The Flow Country is regarded by many as being the best blanket bog of its type in the world. The precious peatland habitats are not only important for nature and wildlife, they also provide vital services for people and are one of our richest carbon stores, making them a vital defence against the effects of climate change.
The partnership now has a clear timetable to prepare and submit a full nomination to Unesco, who will then determine whether or not the Flow Country meets the criteria for World Heritage Site status.
The Flow Country has bogs in the tundra-like landscape which have been growing since the end of the last Ice Age more than 10,000 years ago.
The area's peat is up to 10m (33ft) deep and its soil stores about 100 million tonnes of carbon.
Wildlife found in the area include otters, deer and common scoter ducks. In the UK, common scoters breed at only a few locations, including the Flow Country and the lochs and and glens near Inverness.
