Grant: Alliance Grants

Peatlands are important stores of carbon, storing more carbon that the world's forests combined, despite covering only 3% of the Earth's surface. Peatlands are usually broken into two groups: bogs and fens. Bog peatlands get their water only from rain, whereas fens can get their water from streams, groundwater, as well as rain. Some of these peatlands, typically bogs, are used for horticultural peat, the 'peat moss' that you can buy at garden centres, which is used to grow vegetables and flowers in your garden or commercial greenhouses. Once the peat has been extracted, the sites need to be restored so they begin to accumulate carbon again. Most of the extracted peatlands in Canada have been restored to a bog peatland, however, sometimes it might make more sense to restore these sites to a fen peatland given the properties of the remaining peat in the field. However, we must improve our understanding about fen restoration in Canada. At the previous restoration sites, little attention was paid to linking the restoration with the surrounding landscape; often an abrupt transition between the restored site and the natural landscape surrounding it would occur. Basically, there was no ecotone between the two ecosystems, just an abrupt transition. Our research aims to address these two topics: fen restoration and ecotone creation. We are going to restore a large peat extraction site in south eastern Manitoba. At the site we are going to use different approaches to try and retain as much water on the site as possible and then measure the hydrologic and carbon cycles to see how effective our approaches are. We are also going to create a gentle slope between the natural ecosystem and the restored site, hoping to encourage the flow of water and nutrients to the restoration.