PeatSense
Welcome to PeatSense!
PeatSense is a collaborative platform aimed at contributing to the monitoring, restoration and conservations at peatlands at scale. It is developed by the AI2Peat project, a project funded by Science Foundation Ireland under its Future Digital Challenge call. The AI2Peat consortium is composed of CeADAR - Ireland's centre for applied AI -, iCRAG - the SFI centre for applied geosciences - and NPWS - Ireland's National Parks and Wildlife Services.
The Importance of Peatlands
Sustainable peatland management is a major societal challenge in Ireland and worldwide. Peatlands are wetland ecosystems where, under oxygen-poor conditions, partly decayed organic material (plant remains) accumulates over thousands of years. Over time, they draw down vast amounts of carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere and sequester the carbon as organic soil. Peatlands provide a range of important ecosystem services to society. By storing and filtering water, they help to minimize pollution of water courses, to reduce costs of clean water and to alleviate drought and flooding. They support an array of flora and fauna, including many rare and especially adapted species. Despite representing only 3% of the global land area, peatlands store more carbon than all the world's forests. As societies have developed economically, however, much of Earth's peatland has been damaged or destroyed, thus contributing to the global biodiversity and warming crises.
Peat soil covers about 20% of Ireland's land area; over 90% of this is damaged. Pressures include drainage for agriculture, forestry or infrastructure development, and extraction for fuel (turf). Although Ireland has stopped industrial peat extraction and begun rehabilitating some affected sites, this represents a small minority of Irish peatlands. In the majority, anthropogenic pressures persist, including small-scale extraction, even in legally protected areas. The results are habitat loss, water management issues, and largely unquantified emissions of CO₂.
Ireland is under increasing societal, legal and financial pressures regarding international commitments to conserve and restore peatlands (EU Habitats Directive & upcoming Nature Restoration Law), to maintain and improve water quality (EU Water Framework Directive), and to estimate and report reliable national greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from peatlands (UN Paris Agreement). Management challenges are further complicated by the sensitivity of the rainwater-dependent Irish peatlands to climate change. Opportunities for Ireland include:
- achievement of national climate action and biodiversity goals and international commitments for the benefit of future generations.
- realisation of a socially-just transition to new or more sustainable economic activities and opportunities (green energy, carbon credits, tourism, etc.).
- world-leadership in data-driven and community-orientated peatland management.
The problem to be addressed really is reducing CO2 emissions from degraded peatlands by “rewetting” them, which is the majority. We need to know where this is possible, and how feasible that is. We lack the condition of that peatland at the habitat scale. A national peatland “condition” map will help this. So if this project can do that, NPWS and others can better identify areas to manage and restore, and develop CO2 emission factors associated with that.
Dr. Shane Regan (NPWS)
AI2Peat's Societal Impact Champion
Join us and Collaborate with Others!
Register your account today to unlock more content. Here’s a glimpse of that what PeatSense offers:
PLEASE NOTE: PeatSense is currently in BETA mode. This means that some functionalities might be missing or buggy. Please let us know if you find anything weird and if you think new functionalities are needed!
