Andy Baird

Exciting 24-month Postdoc opportunity for a peatland palaeoecologist, working with Dr Jenna Sutherland at Leeds Beckett U. on the NERC-funded InSPIRE project. Investigating initiation of new peatlands in deglaciating parts of Alaska, including fieldwork vacancies.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/ce0984li_web...

Peatland carbon – the facts Demystifying peatland carbon stores, carbon sinks, and other gassy issues

New on Peatpedia - an attempt to demystify #peatland carbon stores, sinks, and other gassy issues!

open.substack.com/pub/peatpedi...

Just accepted a request from Hydrological Processes to review a paper. I am the *25th* person to be approached. The previous 24 have turned down the request to review. No wonder some papers are a long time 'in the system', much to our frustration. Peer review can't go on like this.

Many congratulations Paul! Very well deserved.

For over 15 years the McMaster Ecohydro Lab has awarded the #NobelPeatPrize to the authors of the best peatland or peat paper of the year.

It’s that time of year again where we review papers and finalize a list of nominees.

Do you have a fave paper for 2025 you would like us to consider?

Rewilding: Ten Years of Evolution and Development Rewilding has matured into a mainstream approach in nature conservation. More than 450 academic papers on rewilding have been published since the term first appeared in print in the early 1990s. Rewil...

Our Annual Reviews paper "Rewilding: Ten Years of Evolution and Development" is now available Open Access. www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

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...

There seems to be one study at least that suggests that tick abundance on wet blanket bog is very low (doi: 10.1111/1365-2664.12141). I wonder if the part of the answer is to re-wet drained and damaged blanket bog? Have you considered tick surveys in your experimental plots?

Out of interest, who is the expert?

Has the expert published their research on ticks and burning? I am sure you can see my concern. You make strong statements based on a conversation with someone in the field. And you tag @naturalengland.bsky.social presumably in an attempt to influence policy, but where is the science?

Thanks for this.

Andreas, what is your "most likely" and "huge" assessment based on? I can only find apparently anecdotal information on the problem from the Moorland Association's website. Can you direct me to any papers on burning and ticks? There seem to be several possible causes of rises in tick numbers.

Andreas, what species of Sphagnum are you recording? Also, why aren't there any error bars for 2025?

Fab work by our PhD student Resti Salmayenti who has published her first thesis paper in Environmental Research Letters showing how drainage and land cover interact to affect fire occurrence in Indonesian peatlands. Our paper is open access here: iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

It’s quite a stretch to say Heather (Calluna) 'thrives' in wet conditions. It doesn’t, and is usually outcompeted by other mire plant species. That has given rise to the concept of the ‘Calluna Limit’. If a site is wet enough and the ‘wetter’ mire species return, burning isn’t needed.

A stunning dreamy planty pond. Pond covered in pondweeds

We have been described as "THE BEST NGO THAT NOBODY KNOWS ABOUT"

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I quote: "In parts this will definitely be the case. But not in general, that is what peat cores tell us." So, in general, we can't say anything *yet* from peat cores because the analysis has not been done. I think we need to be clear on that, and should avoid drawing conclusions from a few cores.

Andreas: have you done a systematic review/analysis of the peat core evidence? If so, I'd be very interested in seeing it. I'm thinking multiple studies and many 10s or even 100s of cores across large areas. Also, what does heather dominance look like in a peat core?

Neither do I. 10 years is too neat a number anyway. Why not go back 8 years, 12, 17? Would it not make more sense to look first at the pattern of publishing on peatland restoration - how has the number of papers and reports on restoration varied over the last few decades?

Check out our new paper:
"Peatland pools are tightly coupled to the contemporary carbon cycle"

A short thread and some site photos!
doi.org/10.1111/gcb....

This week I examined a PhD. I was paid £210 for doing so. I estimate the true cost for my time is > £2000. The candidate is an overseas student who pays very high fees. Where does all the money go? (A rhetorical question!)

First or second, not the third!

‘Why are some peatlands resilient to climate change and others not?’ Fully-funded NERC PhD studentship with me and Paul Morris at the University of Leeds. Please re-post. Details: panorama-dtp.ac.uk/research/why...

The McMaster Ecohydrology Lab presents the 2023 #NobelPeatPrize nominees!

The winner will be announced at the end of November from Nobel, Ontario. #PeatPaper

Ooops; I see I forgot to remove the X/Twitter hashtags from the first post in the thread!

5/5 Funded by UK Natural Environment Research Council, and an amazing congopeat.net team effort!

4/n The new model will now be run into the future to simulate how management and climate change might affect the Congo peatland carbon store over the next 50-100 years.

3/n The new model, constrained with field data, is able to reproduce the distinctive age-depth curve from the peatland, including the ‘ghost interval’, and reveals that the peatland likely lost over 6 m of peat over a period of ~3000 years during climatic drying.

2/n In the paper we use a new version of the DigiBog model to simulate carbon accumulation and loss from a Congolese peatland, building on the work reported in our earlier open access Nature paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

1/n New open access #PeatTwitter #PeatPaper: “Simulating carbon accumulation and loss in the central Congo peatlands” onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.....