| UPLANDS - BLANKET PEAT AND BURNING
Blanket peat vegetation responses to burning and cutting On each site we have four spatially separated experimental blocks looking at the vegetation and hydrological responses of burning and cutting over blanket bog. © Siân Whitehead/GWCT
KEY OUTPUTS We initiated a long-term cut and burn experiment on five moorland sites in the northern dales. We collected baseline data in winter 2019/20, before management treatment began, and shall continue to collect data on post-treatment vegetation responses for the next 10 years at least. Post-treatment responses by vegetation were measured after the first growing season. Complementary collection of data on invertebrate abundance at the experimental sites will measure food availability to grouse and waders during the critical nesting and pre-fledging period.
Siân Whitehead Madeleine Benton
24 | GAME & WILDLIFE REVIEW 2020
In 2018, we started a study to look at the vegetation and hydrological responses of burning and cutting over blanket bog. With four treatments (burning, cutting with brash left, cutting with brash removed and no-treatment control) replicated at five sites in the north Pennines, it is planned as a long-term study to last at least 10 years. However, shortly after selecting our study sites and starting pre-treatment baseline monitoring, Natural England’s (NE) position statement on burning on blanket peat was published. Unable to secure the requisite consents for burning, we had to find alternative sites at very short notice. Thanks to the support of landowners and keepers, we not only managed to identify alternative sites, but also managed to complete baseline vegetation surveys and get the burn and cutting treatments in place before the end of the burning season in mid-April 2020. We now have our study up and running at five sites, spread from the North Yorkshire Dales, through Upper Teesdale, Weardale, and into Tynedale with sites offering a range of altitudinal conditions and peat depths (see Table 1). On each site we have four spatially separated experimental blocks. Each block comprises four plots, to each of which one of the four treatments was randomly assigned. From each of these sites, we are collecting a range of data to look at the vegetation and hydrological responses to the burning and cutting treatments; this year we also conducted some preliminary investigations into the abundance of invertebrates. We collected baseline vegetation measurements over the winter 2019/20, collecting information on vegetation structure and composition as well as collecting samples of heather tips which we sent to Forest Research for analyses of nutritional content. Alongside this, we started monthly measurements of water table depth (with a subset of plots also being monitored continuously with the use of automated data loggers) and soil moisture content. Water samples are taken from some of the plots and are sent to Manchester University for determination of the extent of water discolouration and carbon content. As soon as the burn and cut treatments had been completed, we quantified the immediate effects of those treatments (mowing height, depth of moss removed, burn severity), and we returned in autumn to look at vegetation responses after the first post-treatment growing season. As part of this, we went back to the control plots (with no experimental manipulation), to re-measure the vegetation so we can see how vegetation changes in the absence of burning or mowing.
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