Evaluating Peatland Management for Multiple Ecosystem Services

Ainoa Pravia from the Ecological Sciences Group, James Hutton Institute, will deliver this Aberdeen Entomological Club seminar entitled “Evaluating peatland management for multiple ecosystem services”. It will be held at the James Hutton Institute in Aberdeen (and screened to the Institute’s Dundee site).

Drainage is the main impact of land use change in peatlands, affecting valuable ecosystem services such as biodiversity and carbon sequestration. Peatland restoration could play a key role in climate change mitigation worldwide by reducing emissions from land use changes and contributing to carbon sequestration; and trade-offs would be expected when restoration targets shift their objectives by favouring certain ecosystem services over others. Diversity plays a functional role in ecosystems, whereby species functional traits influence both ecosystem functioning and species ability to respond to environmental changes, allowing fluctuations in ecosystem processes to be predicted on the basis of community composition changes. As such, this project aims to utilise invertebrate taxa to assess the effectiveness of peatland management, identify trade-offs between restoration objectives and develop indicators of restoration success that will facilitate the monitoring of restored peatlands.

The talk starts at 4pm with light refreshments available from 3.30pm.

For further information, please contact Jenni Stockan, Environmental & Biochemical Sciences, James Hutton Institute, Craigiebuckler, Aberdeen, AB15 8QH, UK. Office: +44 (0)1224 395 239, or Jennifer Slater, Ecological Sciences, James Hutton Institute, Invergowrie, Dundee, DD2 5DA.