Page 44 - Discovery Guide

site, providing the conditions for healthy blanket bog to flourish and rebooting the natural processes that built up the deep layers of peat that still blanket the Bowland Fells.
It’s labour-intensive and painstaking work and if successful, the peat will start to accumulate again at the rate of just a few millimetres a year. As the water level rises and the peat begins to flourish, this natural ecosystem will continue
to absorb carbon and soak up excess rainfall for centuries to come. According to Natural England’s projections,
this latest peat restoration project in Bowland will lock in some 24,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent and deliver more than £3 million of greenhouse gas benefits over the next half-century.
To save time and labour, helicopters are employed to fly in the materials required to restore the more remote expanses of peat, minimising the use of tracked
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vehicles to carry heavy loads over the fragile peat bog – which would result in more damage to the habitat than would be addressed by the restoration work in the first place. Once the restoration work is complete, drones are again deployed to survey the area to monitor progress in addition to land-based surveys on foot.
Forest of Bowland Peatlands Officer, Dominic Hartley, said: “It may be expensive, but making use of this sort of technology significantly increases the precision and efficiency of the work we are doing.
“Using a combination of drones, digital mapping systems and GPS technology accurate to around 20cm to identify eroded areas enables us to create a
very precise project map, targeting the most degraded peat and guiding the contractors doing the restoration work
to the priority areas. Working in this way ensures that interventions are targeted with pinpoint accuracy and effectiveness.”
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