Scotland is a peat-rich nation. Healthy peatlands deliver a wide range of ecosystem services, including carbon sequestration, carbon storage and a specialised biodiversity.

However, much of Scotland’s peat resource is damaged: eroding, drained or converted to other land uses. The Scottish Government has made a significant commitment to restore peatland areas that have been damaged.

Peatlands restored to a functioning ecosystem can better withstand a changing climate and also provide vital flood risk protection. It takes time for the benefits of restoration to take effect.

This paper explores how we can monitor success. Long-term monitoring is important to track this recovery and prompt intervention when necessary.

Despite significant investment in peatland restoration we still have a lot to learn, particularly on the best techniques to use, and in understanding how long the process takes.

Snow cover is a key aspect of what defines the character of the Cairngorms National Park (CNP). It underpins the ecology, hydrology and economy, which are all dependent on how much snow falls, and where and how long it stays.

In this summary assessment we compared historic temperature and precipitation data (1918-2018) with observed snow cover days (1969-2005) to identify how temperature affects snow days. We then modelled future snow cover days using the best available data generated by the UK Met Office to identify some possible trends for the Cairngorms National Park. 

Modelling snow cover based on climate projections is challenging, and we currently only have daily climate data projections for the high emissions scenario. However, our initial results show a reduction in snow cover as the observed warming trend continues and accelerates. Successful global efforts to reduce emissions may moderate this impact, whilst even higher emissions rates (e.g. due to ecosystem carbon releases) may further increase impacts.

Key findings

• There has been an overall decline in observed snow cover in the Cairngorms National Park (1969-2005). This trend conforms to those seen across other mountain areas and the Arctic and is in keeping with the observed global warming trend.
• There is a clear observed decrease in the number of days of snow cover at all elevation levels over the 35 winters between 1969/70 and 2004/05, with higher elevations having a larger proportional decrease.
• In the near-term, our estimates indicate the potential for a continuation of snow cover at the current range of variation, but with a substantial decline from the 2040s. These findings are in line with results from the UK Meteorological Office and Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2019).

The area of peatland restoration that can be delivered each year is limited by a number of factors, including physical accessibility. This short project used existing data on proxies of snow cover and degree of difficulty for access to estimate the proportion of time in an average year that restoration would not be possible.

• Our results suggest that, nationally, during periods of between 2 to 100 days per year, conditions could make sites physically inaccessible to efforts to carry out peatland restoration. This will vary depending on the specific site location, and our model is able to provide such data for individual locations.
• Peatland condition categories more likely to be located at higher altitude (e.g. eroded peatland) or further from access roads (e.g. heather- or grass-dominated modified bog) had higher average number of days that would be inaccessible than condition categories associated with better human access (e.g. peat extraction, cropland conversion, intensive grassland).
• The values were mostly determined by the estimate for snow cover, with only a smaller proportion attributed to the additional time required to access a site.
• This analysis is highly sensitive to the assumption that the Met Office days of ground frost are an appropriate proxy for the number of days a site would be inaccessible due to snow on the ground.  It does not take into account other restrictions to access.

The boundary between productive land and hill land in Scotland has moved over time, in response to climate and also to market demand. Scotland’s climate is changing, and this will mean changes for those areas of Scotland that sit on the margins of productive agriculture.

In this context sustainable soil management is a specific challenge as Scotland adapts to a changing climate.

This report examines the four dominant ways that farmers will adapt to climate change, and their impact on different services.

Key findings:

• It is likely that land use change will result in the intensification of land management. The result would be a reduction in most aspects of natural capital including soil carbon, water quality and biodiversity. An increase in arable cropping from current levels and a switch to winter cereals could increase soil erosion and flood risk.
• An exception would be the potential increase in forestry and woodland, though the benefits ofplanting depend greatly on what is planted and where it sits within the landscape or catchment.
• It is particularly difficult to assess the likely changes in livestock numbers. This makes it difficultto assess the greenhouse gas emissions from their rearing, as it is not possible to predict thebalance of their removal to allow arable cropping, the increase in extensive livestockmanagement which would affect emissions intensity, and the intensification of management oncurrently more marginal ground.
• One approach to assessing the risk of autonomous adaptation would be to model the impacts of a set of scenarios of change so that comparison could be made with changes expected from other drivers; if potential impacts are large in comparison then greater attention would need to be given to strategies to avoid or mitigate impacts.