Our restoration

Stake Moss looking lush and green in the summer, post restoration

Stake Moss post restoration © Elliott Lorimer

Surveys

There's a lot of hard work before the hard work starts - each site is painstakingly surveyed before we start to plan for restoration...

YPP staff surveying peatlands, Ingleborough in the background beneath a glowering sky

Surveying for Wild Ingleborough © YPP

Foot surveys

Before we draft a restoration plan, we need to know what's on the ground. Our team walk a series of transects over each site, stopping every 100 metres to measure peat depth, record vegetation and any erosion features. All of these data are logged on GPS mappers and later used to plan restoration for the site

Image of dendritic gully system taken by Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

UAV picture of dendritic gully system

Aerial surveys

After the foot survey, we map the site from the air with an Unoccupied Aerial Vehicle (UAV). UAVs allow us to cover ground very quickly and the accurate sensors help us to make sense of confusing terrain, identifying how water is moving across the ground. This means that we can target our interventions where they will be most effective thus achieving the most from a given site's budget.

A previously unrecorded ancient cairn, now collapsed

Previously unrecorded ancient cairn © Emily Stewart-Rayner

Archaeology surveys

In parallel with our own surveys, we contract specialist historic environment surveys. These help us to help us avoid damage to any historical artefacts or sites on the peatlands we are restoring, and can uncover previously unknown features of history.

Techniques

Once we have surveyed a site, we can draft the restoration plan for agreement with the landowner. We'll use different techniques to address different erosions features. All of these are aimed at getting the water table back up towards the surface and keep it on site. Once we have addressed the hydrology, we can re-establish characteristic blanket bog vegetation.

Aerial view of reservoir formed with coir logs on Stake Moss. — Coir reservoir on Stake Moss © Chris Osborne

Bunding

We use bunding to break up surface flow across areas of bare peat, although it can also be use in gullies with a low flow. This can be in the form of coir logs or turfed over peat; peat bunding is a recent adoption of a lowland restoration technique. By breaking up the flow of surface water, we retain rainfall on the moors and allow vegetation to re-establish on the bare peat.

Drainage ditches blocked with peat dams — Block grips on Fleet Moss © Les Hughes

Grip blocking

There are several materials we can use to block these channels and we will always look to use what is readily available on site, so peat dams are a preferred option. A skilled digger driver takes a sod of peat and keys it into the sides of the grip and then uses existing vegetation to put a turf on top to try establish vegetation in the channel.

Gully dammed with stone sediment trap on Stake Moss. — Dammed gully on Stake Moss © Chris Osborne

Gully blocking

We match our intervention to the gully we are blocking. Where there is peat to key into at the sides and bottom of the gully, we install timber dams. Where the peat at the bottom of the gully has completely eroded down to the mineral soil, we would use stone. If a gully is too wide to dam effectively, we install a series of baffles to slow the flow of water through the feature.

Reprofiling

Steep slopes of bare peat make it impossible for vegetation to re-establish; our contractors lower the angle of the slope to below 30° and turf over the bare peat. Where erosion is so severe there isn’t enough vegetation around to turf the slope, we use heather brash (cut heather stalks with mosses and seed mixed in) to cover the bare areas. We use lime and fertiliser to try kick start plant growth in difficult conditions.

East Gill pictured from the air after restoration works. — East Gill from the air post restoration © Aaron de Raat

Revegetation

YPP has revegetated 209 ha of bare peat using heather brash, seed and plug plants. The key species we want to get established on Yorkshire’s peatlands are the cottongrasses and sphagnum mosses as these characteristic bog species are key for peat formation. YPP has planted 800,000 cottongrass plugs and over 1.3 million sphagnum moss plugs and this number only continues to rise as we work on more sites.

Progress

We delivered a remarkable 42,868 ha of peatland restoration work by the end of March 2023, which is 45% of the estimated 94,220 ha of peatland in our operational area.