RECOUP-Moor: Restoring Ecosystem Carbon Uptake of a Post-fire Moorland

Northern peatlands are important terrestrial carbon (C) stores; they are estimated to store one-sixth of the global soil carbon stock in the form of slowly accumulated non-decomposed plant material, peat. The production of decay-resistant plant litter, in combination with constrained microbial metabolic activity, has resulted in peatlands being long-term C sinks. However, disturbances such as wildfires can damage this natural carbon sink, and lead to long-term negative impacts on the range of habitats and water-resource qualities of peatlands. Recently, in a period of less than two weeks, the Saddleworth Moor wildfire has consumed 1000 ha of peatland that contained a substantial amount of carbon. This carbon, previously locked away in the peatland, has re-entered the atmosphere where it directly contributes to global warming. The effects of the fire ripple further into the future as the wildfire has eradicated the plant and, most likely, the microbial community, which together play a central role in building up the soil carbon stock in the peatland. Given these impacts, and to limit the detrimental effects of the fire beyond the direct loss of a significant carbon pool, it is important to rapidly re-initiate the carbon uptake functions of post-fire peatlands, and restore this ecosystem to a pre-fire state. A previous study on former agricultural soils (Wubs et al. 2016; Nature Plants 2:16107) has shown that the restoration of pre-agricultural plant communities can be accelerated using microbial inoculates from soils taken from natural target communities nearby. If these findings are universal, inoculation of post-fire peatlands with microbial communities from natural peatland habitats can be used to speed up the recovery of the plant community, and even steer trajectories of re-vegetation to plant communities that have previously been lost (e.g. peat moss dominated communities in the Peak district). Peat soil inoculation may thus accelerate the recovery of ecosystem processes that underpin the carbon sink function of peatlands. RECOUP-Moor will explore the impacts of fire, and the role of soil inoculates in recovery, aiming to answer the following questions: 1. How has wildfire impacted on peatland microbial life? Here, we will identify the immediate effect of the fire on the composition of the plant and microbial communities and how the fire with different intensities have affected microbial activity and ecosystem processes such as carbon dioxide assimilation, respiration, methanotrophy and methanogenesis, and the production of dissolved organic carbon. 2. Can we speed-up recovery of the peatland ecosystem using soil inoculates? Our project will run an innovative and unprecedented experiment where we inoculate the post-fire peatland subjected to disparate fire intensities with peat microbial inoculates from adjacent intact (i.e. unburned) peatlands to test whether such restoration actions can speed-up the recovery of the ecosystem, with emphasis on carbon-related processes. This research project, RECOUP-Moor, will bring a breakthrough solution to practitioners, as it will provide essential knowledge on the effectiveness of soil inoculates as a restoration technique that targets the rapid recovery of carbon sequestering vegetation after severe disturbance. Testing the application of this new 'restoration toolbox' will allow land managers, conservation bodies, and policy makers to direct restoration after disturbance, and also aid in general restoration of degraded peatlands. This will benefit habitat creation, and climate-change mitigation and water-resource management through improving the quality of peatland ecosystems.