Four years of dedicated events and training has helped develop a new understanding of the peat-forming bog mosses of the Peak District and South Pennines moorlands.
This region was described in the 1980s as ‘something of a Sphagnum desert’ as gross air pollution (to which the bog mosses are very sensitive) had caused their almost total decline. However, nowadays with reduced air pollution and careful management by bodies such as the Moors for the Future Partnership, the mosses are making a remarkable recovery. Eco-Science in the Park's citizen science projects are demonstrating a recovery with areas of bare peat bog re-wetting and covering over, plus the return of a diversity of bog moss species (anything from 15 to 20 species). These recovering species include the most important of all – the active peat bog formers – mopping up atmospheric carbon dioxide and holding back potential flood waters – so delivering important ‘ecosystem services’ and even economic benefits.
Excitingly, the research and surveys have turned up a number of important ‘peat formers’ returning, but even more intriguing, a number of plants which the experts so far have been unable to identify with certainty. These may be unusual hybrids, as mosses and ferns can hybridise and this is one way in which new species may emerge. Alternatively, these could be peculiar forms induced by the former gross levels of air pollution, or even species ‘new to science’. A possibility is that some species are long-distance colonisers moving into this vacant niche from which the natives have been removed by pollution – and mosses can travel long distances as spores. We are now collaborating with UK and European experts to get to the bottom of this mystery – and the work may require genetic fingerprinting in order to resolve the identities.
Prof. Ian Rotherham
Sheffield Hallam University / British Ecological Society
