Abstract
The response of peatland carbon accumulation to climate can be complex, with internal feedbacks and processes that can dampen or amplify responses to external forcing. Records of carbon accumulation from peat cores provide a record of carbon which persists as peat over long periods of time, demonstrating the long-term response of peatland carbon stocks to climatic events. Numerous records of long-term carbon accumulation exist globally. However, peatlands from oceanic climates, and particularly blanket bog, remain under-represented. Scottish bogs, which collectively have more than 475 separate palaeoecological records, may prove to be a valuable resource for studying the impact of environmental change on past rates of carbon accumulation. Here we present 12 records of carbon accumulation from the north of Scotland. We support these results with a further 43 records where potential carbon accumulation is inferred from published ages. These reveal a trend of high carbon accumulation in the early Holocene, declining in the mid-to-late Holocene. The trend is consistent with accumulation profiles from other northern peatlands and is likely to have been caused by climatic cooling. Considerable variability in carbon accumulation rates between locations is apparent for the mid-to-late Holocene. We attribute to hydrologically induced changes in carbon accumulation which are likely to be inconsistent between sites.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 3 |
| Pages (from-to) | 1-30 |
| Number of pages | 30 |
| Journal | Mires and Peat |
| Volume | 23 |
| Issue number | 03 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 25 Oct 2018 |
Bibliographical note
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSThis work was primarily funded by the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland (grant LG13STIR007), the Leverhulme Trust (RPG-2015- 162), the British Ecological Society and the Royal Society. The research that generated the Gordonbush records was funded by SSE, ETP and EPSRC. We would also like to thank the RSPB, Patrick Sinclair, the Forestry Commission and SSE for granting
access to the field sites and for help in retrieving the peat cores. Angela Creevy, David Braidwood and volunteers from Forsinard Flows NNR helped with the core collection while Prof. Stuart Gibb, Dr Chris Hayward and Norrie Russell provided valuable advice and assistance.
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
The study was conceived by RJP and JLR. Fieldworkwas conducted by JLR, TJS, BS, RA, ARA, RJP, SWand AH. Data compilation was conducted by JLR andRJP. Labwork was conducted by JLR, BS and TJS.RJP, RA, ARA, AN, DM, SW and AH secured funding and supervised students. Data analysis was conducted by JLR and RJP. JLR and RJP wrote the first draft of the manuscript to which all authors
contributed.
Keywords
- Blanket bog
- Caithness
- Climate
- Flow country
- Lorca
- Peat
- Sutherland
- Tephrochronology
Access to Document
- Holocene carbon accumulation in the peatlands of northern Scotland
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