Broads Monitoring
Earlier this month we completed our first monitoring visit to the Broads CANAPE site at Horsey, Norfolk. CANAPE (link to website https://northsearegion.eu/canape/) or Creating a New Approach to Peatland Ecosystems is a European funded Interreg project which aims to deliver peatland restoration; to encourage carbon sequestration as part of mitigation approaches to tackling climate change. The restoration of the peatland will also help encourage the development of valuable habitat for rare UK species.
European collaborative projects remain valuable to tackle international scale challenges and co-develop long term solutions. The Broads Authority is the lead partner of the CANAPE project.
Peatlands are vital carbon stores and are responsible for sequestering up to 0.37 gigatonnes of CO2/yr-1; this equates to 42% of all soil carbon. Damaged and drained peatlands contribute around 10% of all terrestrial CO2. Thus, protecting them is vital to reduce the impacts of climate change (IUCN, 2017).
The site at Horsey has been selected as part of the project to undergo wetland and peatland regeneration, by installing water control structures and containing bunds. As part of the monitoring of this test site, Exo was tasked, alongside the Broads Authority, with developing an appropriate monitoring schedule to ensure changes in environmental parameters are well documented.
The monitoring carried out by Exo consisted of water and soil sampling, testing for a range of different nutrients as well as installation of pressure sensors across the site to monitor changes in water levels. Monitoring also included the installation of dip wells for surface water monitoring and a walkover survey to identify potential grazing threats to newly planted plug flora from deer and geese.
As part of the monitoring, analogous parameters were collected from a baseline site directly south of the test site, to compare changes to current land use, which is predominantly rough grazing land.
A further 25 site visits over the next year will compare the results obtained to determine the effectiveness of this scheme in regenerating and creating peatland and wetland habitats.
If you’d like to find out more about the projects we are working on, or are interested in any of the services mentioned, then visit our website and follow us on social media.
Wet Farming project partners (incl. contractors):
Broads Authority (lead)
Land Manager Robin Buxton
Famers support Richard Hirst
Broads IDB
Environment Agency
Natural England
Exo Environmental Ltd
New Energy Farms
Verdant Solutions Ltd
Ivel Aquatics Ltd