South Atlantic
Environmental Research
Institute

Sheep vs Sealions – Quantifying the human impacts on greenhouse gas emissions and carbon stock of Falkland Island peatlands

Funding bodies: CENTA, Georgia Seafood’s

PhD affiliations: SAERI, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, University of Leicester, Natural History Museum, NERC

Project overview

The proportional extent of peat on the Falkland Islands rivals that of any other country at around 4529 km2 or approximately 43% of the land area. The nature of land use, ranging from grazing and drainage through to peat cutting, is thought to have resulted in these peatlands becoming a carbon source, in the region of 1,149,326 t CO2e yr-1. However, no direct measurements of greenhouse gas emissions from Falkland peat has been published; therefore, it is unknown whether these peatlands continue to sequester carbon or are now net sources of emissions. This project will begin to quantify greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from these systems and determine the influence of land use on GHG fluxes. It will investigate the underlying drivers of these emissions through organic geochemical analysis and microbiological techniques before upscaling findings to the wider Falklands landscape.

Project Objectives

  • GHG flux - Maintain static chamber sites for GHG flux measurements over a minimum of a six month period. Combine these fluxes with meterological, edaphic and vegetation data to determine key drivers of CO2 and CH4 Establish key drivers of NEE in Falkland Peat and use Earth Observation to upscale findings
  • Microbial community – Collect samples of microbial communities from across the Falklands, sequence and analyse these communities evaluating the richness and composition in peat at depth. Determine which parts of the community may be offering the greatest contribution to GHG flux
  • Organic geochemistry – Analyse full depth peat cores using FTIR to establish the structure of organic matter within Falkland Island peat, determine how this changes with depth or between sites. Use supplementary analytical techniques to determine the contribution of plants to organic matter, the presence of respiration end products to determine key zones of microbial activity and carbon cycling
  • Carbon stock - Contextualise gas flux data by carrying out wider surveys of the edaphic and vegetation conditions along with peat depth across the Falklands and under different grazing managements. Apply gas flux data to these sites to enable more accurate upscaling of results and understanding of total carbon stock.

Katy Ross

Supervisors: Prof Chris Evans, Prof Susan Page, Dr Steffi Carter, Dr Arnoud Boom, Dr Anne Jungblut, Dr Ross Morrison

Dates: Sept 2021 - March 2024
After graduating from the University of Exeter with a BSc in Conservation Biology and Ecology, Katy went on to work for Devon County Council as an ecologist before starting her PhD in 2021. Katy has previously carried out other research assistant roles including working on microplastics, disease vector transmission and sociological longitudinal studies however; she has always had a fascination for peat. Initially, volunteering for Durham Wildlife Trust she worked on the lowland raised bogs of the county before switching focus to blanket bogs with the North Pennines AONB. In 2019, she spent four months working with the RSPB in the Flow Country, Europe’s largest semi natural continuous blanket bog and working with researchers there inspired her to pursue this PhD.
Year in review:  July 2021- June 22

Katy began her PhD in September 2021, originally based at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology she spent the first few months learning about Falkland Island peat whilst bringing herself up to speed with scientific methodologies. Katy visited the Falklands for the first time in January 2022 and began speaking to land owners to set up field sites across East Falkland. Katy now has five sites that she will regularly monitor for carbon dioxide and methane emissions. She also set up a range of supplementary measures at each of these sites including equipment to measure water table depth and erosion rates. Katy returned to the UK in April where she completed a training week as part of her doctoral training programme before moving to the University of Leicester where she began to work on understanding the organic matter composition of the peat cores she acquired on her first visit using Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy. Katy has begun to present initial findings at conferences held at the University of Leicester, Natural History Museum and Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and was awarded best Postgraduate Geography Talk. To encourage more people to get involved with soil science and carbon calculations, Katy spent the summer of 2022 supporting the running and coordination of the British Ecological Societies undergraduate summer school. Katy returned to the Falklands in September and has resumed her carbon flux measurements. She is also supporting local landowners to begin working out the carbon content of their peat.
Year in review: July 2022 - June 2023

Katy returned to the Falklands in September 2022 to commence a year of GHG flux sampling. Working at study sites that encompassed a range of grazing management techniques and conditions, which ranged from bare peat to full native vegetation cover, she measured emissions each month along with a series of other environmental variables. She set up and monitored a series of passive sediment samplers to determine particulate carbon loss and conducted a microbiology sampling campaign at each of her sites as well as in areas affected by fire outbreaks. Whilst in the Falklands she conducted a field campaign and associated lab work across Weddell Island producing peat depth and carbon stock maps for the Island and she was involved in several of outreach events.
Year in review: July 2023 - June 2024

Summer 2023 saw the conclusion of Katy’s fieldwork in the Falklands. She made her final measurements across a number of farms measuring greenhouse gas emissions from across a range of grazing systems. In September she joined the Falkland delegation at EXPO PRADO in Uruguay where she presented her early findings to two of the National universities and the British Embassy of Montevideo. Upon returning to the UK Katy delivered a session at the peatlands and carbon workshop as part of the IUCN UK Peatland Conference (IUCN peat conf) and presented a poster. Katy then spent the following nine months with the Natural History Museum working in the microbiology labs there. Here, she was working to extract the DNA from soil bacteria before sequencing the genetic material. Katy is now pausing her studies to work as a research fellow with the British Government and will be returning to her PhD in April 2025. Throughout the past few months Katy has had the opportunity to present her work at the British Ecological Society (BES), the European Geosciences Union (EGU) and several universities. She has also had the opportunity to share more soil science with the Natural History Museums media channels.
FALKLAND ISLANDS OFFICE:
PO Box 609, Stanley Cottage North
Ross Road, Falkland Islands
Stanley, FIQQ 1ZZ
Falkland Islands: +500 27374
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