Pre-restoration carbon dioxide exchange and energy balance dynamics in an eroded upland blanket bog peatland, Scotland, UK

Greenhouse gas emissions from damaged peatlands in the UK contribute around 5% to the annual national UK emissions. This has prompted a large national effort to restore these ecosystems as part of the package of action that aims to deliver net zero by 2050 in the UK and 2045 in Scotland. Eroded peatlands cover an estimated 275kha in Scotland, yet continuous monitoring data on the carbon losses from such sites are very sparse, in part due to the challenge in instrumenting such remote and complex terrain with eddy covariance equipment. We present a full, pre-restoration, 18-month data series of carbon dioxide and energy budget from a typical Scottish eroded peatland and show initial data that suggests sensitivity of the sign of the net annual CO2 budget to interannual climate variability.