Fungal indicators of ecosystem restoration efforts in damaged peatlands – how sensitive are they in relation to tipping points?
Soil fungi are vitally important in the breakdown of macromolecular organic matter, in particularly so in peatlands, where waterlogging creates a bottleneck in oxygen availability. We included an assessment of the active fungal community structure into a wider suite of measures of restoration success on a chronosequence of peatland restoration sites in Northern Scotland. These sites were afforested as part of tax incentives in the 1970s and 1980s, but the negative effects on primarily bird populations were quickly realised, leading to large scale restoration efforts. Compared to the other measures, including greenhouse gas flux assessments, vegetation monitoring and analyses of the organic matter structure of the surface peat, the fungal community structure provided useful additional information. For example, our initial hypothesis was to test whether there was a predictable trajectory in the direction of restoration success measures. This was disproved in the fungal community analyses, with further support by the results from some of the wider suite of measures. We are currently resampling the chronosequence 5 years after the original sampling. I will discuss the potential sensitivity of the fungal community in relation to potential tipping points in the restoration process. We currently assume this sensitivity is related to the hydrological conditions created by the restoration methods. It is vitally important to find a reliable suite of indicators of restoration success, as peatland restoration is included in a large Scottish and UK Government-led effort of measures to mitigate climate change effects.
Host: Elizabeth Charlotte Bourne