Yorkshire Peat Partnership (YPP) has produced a report detailing the findings of the works monitoring undertaken on 20 sites that have undergone restoration work in the Yorkshire Dales and Nidderdale AONB over the past six years. It looks at how well restoration work has fared on different features (grip blocking, gully reprofiling and bare peat revegetation) and also makes comparisons in sites that have previously been monitored to see what changes have occurred.
The results of the report are largely positive and have enabled YPP to adapt and develop restoration techniques to continue to improve restoration work.
A summary of the key findings included:
- Grip blocking with peat dams has on the whole been successful with several sites showing good signs of re-wetting
- Bare peat revegetation showed mixed results but newer techniques seemed in the first instance to be working more successfully than previous methods
- Grips that had had their edges reprofiled as well as been dammed appeared to be revegetating better than grips that had not been reprofiled; this has led to us changing practice and making grip reprofiling standard
- Areas where grips had been blocked were showing a positive change in species composition towards more blanket bog communities.
