Jonny Ritson

No, please do!

Finally updating contact details and affiliations - now "lead specialist advisor" for peatlands at Natural Resources Wales.

Get in touch if you want to develop research proposals in Wales. We have sites of ongoing and future restoration, friendly people and so much data...

🌱 Today we’re launching our State of Natural Resources Report - our biggest assessment of the health of Wales’ natural environment.

Read our report on our website, together with Bridges to the Future, created in collaboration with @futuregencymru.bsky.social

More 👉 https://orlo.uk/50hdT

How to cut harmful emissions from ditches and canals – new research Ditches and canals can be climate heroes.

Check out our new article in The Conversation highlighting strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from ditches and canals 💦 🌱🚜 @peatymike.bsky.social @jpritson.bsky.social theconversation.com/how-to-cut-h...

Make a difference!
Can you turn complex ecological data into clear insights for Wales Peatland Action?
Become our Specialist Peatland Biodiversity Metric & Reporting Advisor!
£42K-£46K+
Closes 28/01/26
swyddi.cyfoethnaturiol.cymru/vacancyinfor...
#jobs @natreswales.bsky.social
#HighNatureLowCarbon

First update from STOTEN in a while. Yet none of these ongoing issues are obvious from STOTEN's homepage. I'd be annoyed if I had been unaware and published with them in the past year.

There is also a suggestion that best quality peatlands will still actually be developed on, if this is 'unavoidable' by which I assume we mean 'most profitable'

Yeah, I've got more time for a discussion of tradeoffs (see East Anglia and food security / offshoring emissions for details) or indeed that some heavily degraded systems are actually unrestorable but some of the arguments in here are off, or rely on a reinterpretation of the term 'irreplaceable'

It's at the bottom of the document: Dr Andy Mills of OWC, a wind energy consultancy

Yes, they are arguing that peat is restorable, therefore they should be allowed to degrade it. But also that degraded peat should be built on rather than restored. A lot of argument over the semantics of the word 'irreplaceable' ignoring the context of biodiversity offsetting where it came from.

Final data downloads from the GGR-Peat Featherbed site. As well as the weather station we have 54 dipwells logged at 15 min resolution for four years = 7.5 million data points!

Data starting to come in from our Bezos Earth Fund project looking at sphagnum and methanotrophy.

If nothing else we had fun playing with the bubble columns!

Fantastic job: Specialist Advisor in Peatland Habitat Monitoring.
Join the dynamic Wales peatland team to lead ecological survey & monitoring elements.
£41K-£44K+ p/a. Closing 14/12/2025. Go for it!
swyddi.cyfoethnaturiol.cymru/VacancyInfor...
@natreswales.bsky.social #GreenJobs #environment #Wales

Make 2026 the year you become our Specialist Advisor in Peatland Hydrology!
Join the dynamic Wales peatland team as technical lead for peatland hydrology monitoring.
£41K-£44K+ p/a. Closing 14/12/2025. Go for it!
swyddi.cyfoethnaturiol.cymru/VacancyInfor...

#jobs @natreswales.bsky.social #Wales

A split image showing Canford Heath, Dorset: left side features a 1960s land utilization survey map with color-coded zones; right side displays a present-day satellite view, highlighting urban development over former heathland.

A historical land use map of Downham Market, Norfolk from the 1960s, shaded to show various land types like arable, urban, and woodland.

Four digitised maps showing land cover changes in Wolverhampton, England from 1930 to 2020, highlighting shifts from broadleaved woodland and grassland to arable land and urban areas.

New analysis of 1960s land use maps, many created by schoolchildren and students, reveals fresh insights on the timing and extent of habitat losses caused by post-war agricultural intensification and urban growth in England and Wales.

www.ceh.ac.uk/press/maps-c...

🧪 1/

#maps #LandUse

Want a breath of fresh air? Join the peatland team!
3 perfect posts to make a positive difference monitoring the success of the peatland restoration programme expanding Wales-wide.
Salary £36,246 - £39,942. Closing 3/12/2025.
Go for it!
swyddi.cyfoethnaturiol.cymru/VacancyInfor...
#GreenJobs #Wales

Hobo u20. Don't get the fancy Bluetooth version with paired barometric top unit... They are not watertight which is a key feature for a water table logger

Interested in peatlands and biogeochemistry? Like fieldwork? Then come and do a PhD at @livunigeog.bsky.social
supervised by me, @rchiverrell.bsky.social, Jenny Williamson (@ukceh.bsky.social eh.bsky.social) + Dewi Davies (@nationaltrust.org.uk ltrust.org.uk) www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Looking for a PhD in environmental science? I will soon have an advert out for a project at @liverpooluni.bsky.social with @ukceh.bsky.social & @nationaltrust.org.uk.

"Peatland drainage + rewetting across the UK uplands + lowlands"

All about GHG emissions and aquatic carbon. Watch this space!

Wrapping up the GGR-Peat project just in time before the gas collars were subsumed into sphagnum hummocks!

Anyone need some Exetainers? I have a few boxes expiring end Dec 25!

Looking for a PhD in aquatic carbon/GHG cycling? Take a look at this fantastic opportunity. Led by @aquaticcarbon.bsky.social and with Amy Pickard, Jens-Arne Subke and me. Field + lab components, and lots of exciting science.

iapetus.ac.uk/studentships...

The most intriguing door sign in the University of Manchester. Sadly, the door is locked. These are private holes in the floor.

Remnants of a lowland raised bog. Left is still under agricultural production, right at ~50cm higher was abandoned in the 60s. Just under 1cm lost per year.

Full results in prep- just wanted to show off some of the more dramatically successful pools!

Without delving too much into the stats - it's safe to say our trial to speed up sphagnum colonisation of restoration pool was successful

It's that time of year again

New #PeatPaper by Lees et al. in #HydrologicalProcesses

"The Sponge Analogy Problem: Moving Towards Clearer Communication of Peatland Hydrological Processes"

#peatlands #hydrology #scicomm

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Embroidered moss made from a selection of textural green fabrics attached to plain cotton fabric stretched across an embroidery hoop. A brown label with the handwritten words 'laboratory incident' is attached to the fabric.

How might stitching help us get to know mosses on more intimate terms?

New coauthored paper from the MossWorlds project on stitching sphagnum moss and doing creative, interdisciplinary work in geography labs: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
@uomcreativemcr.bsky.social (1/3)

In the last year I've been made co-lead of my research group, been told I will be made permanent, been told I will be made redunant, been told I will not be made redundant but not permanent, and now that I can't accept consultancy income because I'm not permanent.

Academia is well run by top minds.