Soil is a fundamental resource for Scotland, underpinning our society, economy and environment and we were asked to explore the mechanisms currently in place for its management.

This project aimed to understand the extent of the different legislative and policy mechanisms for the conservation and management of soil in Scotland, and how they relate to key national institutions.

Key findings:

• Policy relating to soil is wide-ranging and on multiple scales, and close reading of the original texts indicate key relationships between different instruments. However, we confirmed the existing understanding of no single policy designed specifically for the protection of soil.
• Policy instruments can be categorised into three broad areas:
  • Regulatory – environmental protection and regulation
  • Framing – principles and standards
  • Enabling – shaping and encouraging direction of travel.
• Soil protection and management is a feature of a range of policy areas, including environmental protection (such as habitat, biodiversity, landscape, heritage protection, etc.), water, climate change, pollution, waste, land use & planning and land ownership; it may not however be directly mentioned in the primary legislation, but in supporting ‘instruments’ for delivery.
• It is clear that understanding of soil policy is held within the knowledge and experience of the responsible institutions, and the Scottish Government, although this is not well-documented.
• Gaps arise in policies specifically focused on land – for example, the Land Rights and Responsibilities Statement, or planning policy and legislation in Scotland (e.g. Planning (Scotland) Bill); soil protection is an implicit rather than explicit outcome.

Read the Scottish Soil Framework

Peatlands cover nearly a quarter of Scotland and contain over half of the total Scottish soil carbon. However, more than 90% of the lowland raised bogs (and over half of the blanket bog) have been altered to such an extent that they are now degraded, causing substantial Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions.

This report looks at the costs and benefits of peatland restoration activities in Scotland to get a sense of the cost effectiveness of different techniques, primarily targeting work carried out since 2010.

Scottish Government has set ambitious peatland restoration and rewetting targets in the Climate Change Plan. This project provides information about which techniques work in certain circumstances to achieve the initial goal of sustainable rewetting of peatlands.

The Scottish Government’s ambition is to increase woodland cover in Scotland to 25% by the second half of the century. The Scottish Climate Change Plan (2017) has an ambition to increase from the current 18% to around 21% of woodland cover by 2032. This will make an important contribution to reducing Scotland’s net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

However, it is important to understand the consequences of forestry activity, given that approximately two-thirds of Scotland is covered by high carbon-content organic soils of varying depths, including nearly a quarter with deep peat soils

This report examines new evidence published since the Forest Research report ‘Understanding the GHG implications of forestry on peat soils in Scotland’ (Morison et al., 2010). The review broadly confirms the findings of the 2010 report. It remains probable that moderate and high productivity forests planted on shallower peat soils with limited disturbance provide a substantial net carbon uptake over the forest cycle.

Scotland’s extensive peatlands are central to both climate change adaptation and mitigation through being a carbon sink, securing biodiversity and habitats, and reducing flood risk – to name a few benefits. CXC’s contribution in this area needed to add to the work done by the strategic research programme, which mainly is data collection and model development, and cost-benefit analysis at both national scale and at the RSPB Forsinard Flows reserve.

CXC’s contribution has been on the need to better understand the potential for peatland restoration and how it might contribute to greenhouse gas emissions reduction in Scotland, for example through the following work:

• developing a peatland restoration decision support tool (WISE Peatland Choices)
• call-down requests on the emissions abatement potential of peatland restoration, which led to further policy briefs

This work has been in close cooperation with agencies like Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH). SNH have in parallel commissioned research on the scope for blanket bog peatland restoration in Scotland for carbon and biodiversity benefits, and published a range of resources for peatland restoration.

Together, the research was used by the climate change policy team within Scottish Government as oral evidence presented to the Report on Policies and Procedures (the mechanism for implementing the Climate Change (Scotland) Act), and a Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment (RACCE) Committee meeting on the benefits of peatland restoration. Interviews with members of the policy community in Scottish Government suggest that the evidence presented to these committees was instrumental in the allocation of £1.7m, subsequently rising to £15m for peatland restoration between 2012-16 as a Green Stimulus initiative, now called Peatland Action. This same body of evidence also laid the foundation for a proposal in the second Report on Policies and Priorities in 2013 that 21,000 ha of peatlands per year should be restored in the period to 2027. Hutton researchers helped draft the national Peatland Plan, which was put out to consultation in 2014.

This led to several further CXC projects:

• assessing the use and further potential for the Peatland Carbon Calculator
• gathering lessons learnt from the Peatland ACTION programme (established in 2014)
• identifying peatland research priorities
• assessing evidence for the Muirburn Code

As is typically the case with impact identification, it is difficult to disentangle the influence of one strand of research evidence (in this case the CXC’s) and the influence of other entities (in this case NGOs and agencies such as the IUCN’s UK Peatland Programme, RSPB, SNH and the Forestry Commission) in shaping a policy decision – in this case, increasing the level of investment from £1.7m to £15m. Social Network Analysis data (Reed et al., in prep.) suggests that NGOs and agencies played an important role in translating research evidence from CXC research and elsewhere on the GHG benefits of peatland restoration to Scottish Government at this time.

The process of distilling whisky creates by-products
that can be a feed source for sheep and cattle.

This report looks at the entire lifecycle impacts of using some forms of these by-products in renewable energy, traditional animal feed or concentrated dark grains animal feed.

The initial report was published in November 2017, and shared with key stakeholders. We were asked what happened when only draff was produced (i.e., no pot-ale), which prompted a further analysis.

We found a negligible difference between the renewable energy and animal feed scenarios. However, when draff was used to produce renewable energy to replace heavy fuel oil, this had a significant benefit over its use as an animal feed.

Key findings

• All three scenarios were found to have a net beneficial climate change impact, offsetting GHG emissions by avoiding the production of energy, animal feeds and/or fertilisers by other means.
• The renewable energy scenario offset the largest amount of GHG emissions overall.
• While the two animal feed scenarios perform better in certain life-cycle phases, such as capital burdens and material use, the generation of renewable energy avoids a significant amount of carbon through the offsetting of grid electricity and heat.
• The sensitivity of these results to some underlying assumptions was tested during the study:
  • it was found that switching the offset cattle feedstock from rape meal to soya bean meal slightly increases the GWP benefits for the two animal feed scenarios;
  • including woodchip co-firing significantly increases the GWP benefits for the renewable energy scenario;
  • assuming that any heat produced would offset heavy fuel oil (rather than natural gas) improved the GWP results for all three scenarios to varying amounts.
• However, the overall positioning of the three scenarios was unaffected by the sensitivities modelled; the renewable energy scenario remained the most favourable.

Blog by Ricardo https://ee.ricardo.com/lca-for-policy

We work at grass roots level to understand how the challenges of extreme weather and climate change are seen by groups such as farmers, foresters, architects, planners and communities prone to flooding.  This will help in the design of programmes to encourage and help such groups adapt to climate change. We also communicate the pressures and concerns felt by these groups back up to policy makers.

In this way we promote and encourage future-proofing in key areas of Scottish life and livelihood, including land management (agriculture, forestry), and community well-being (flooding, built environment and services).  Our work with Land Management and Natural Environment sector partners complements the work of Adaptation Scotland, which has a prime focus on business and Local Authorities.  Future proofing will help keep Scottish communities and livelihoods resilient in the face of new challenges from climate change and other impacts such as rising energy prices.

We are doing this by:

• Using evidence about the future risks and opportunities from climate change in Scotland and how these will impact on different groups and sectors
• Working with organisations and individuals to explore how these risks are perceived and what responses are currently being considered (e.g. farmers, foresters, rural communities)
• Documenting existing outreach capacity in the land-use sector, and the potential to harness this for adaptation outreach
• Understanding appropriate channels for and methods of outreach
• Developing and delivering outreach in partnership with existing bodies using information, events and demonstration sites
• Feeding messages from the grass roots back to Scottish Government

Demonstration of Adaptation

We are working with a range of organisations in Scotland to showcase adaptation to climate change, initially in the land-use sector. 

Our demonstration work includes:

• Case Studies:  short reports that illustrate a particular issue and the adaptive actions taken at real sites to address each issue so as to increase resilience to climate change (e.g. for the farming sector – dealing with the increased risks of both drought and flooding). For an example see this case study from Greenspace Scotland on the potential for retrofitting green infrastructure in central Glasgow
• Demonstration Site Examples:  data about specific demonstration sites (such as farms, forests, urban space and flood management initiatives and habitat management), again that illustrate particular issues and the adaptive actions taken at these sites to address issues so as to increase resilience.   You can learn more about Scottish demonstration sites via the international adaptation portal  of  weADAPT. You can also read our brief on the importance of demonstration sites here
• Demonstration Networks:  we work with existing organisations to promote awareness and learning about adaptation, and to integrate this work with the advice and information that stakeholders receive through existing ‘trusted sources’.

The case studies listed with the ClimateXChange entry on weADAPT show where we have collaborators and demonstration sites across Scotland.

We have also funded a suite of short film clips showing how climate change might affect Scotland’s forests

Scottish Natural Heritage’s Trend Notes series are summaries based on research data relating to trends and changes in our natural heritage.

Key findings in the trend note on breeding farmland birds are:

• Estimates of trends in abundance are presented at national and 100km square scale for ten species of birds that are strongly associated with farmland.
• Four of the five wader species assessed (curlew, lapwing, oystercatcher and redshank) show significant declines, with only snipe showing an increase.
• The farmland seed-eaters all show stable (skylark, yellowhammer) or increasing (linnet and tree sparrow) long-term trends. In the short term, only skylark has a decreasing trend.
• Targeted management at an appropriate scale can benefit farmland birds. Past declines in corn bunting have been reversed, reflecting the success of targeted management for this species.

Read the Trend Note on the SNH website

Soil carbon, or the content of carbon housed within soil, plays a significant role in the release and absorption of global greenhouse gas emissions. Changes in land use contribute to release of this carbon, and Scottish Government is interested in the potential implications of such change across several policy areas.

It is important to know where peatland has been drained in the past when prioritising areas for restoration.

No comprehensive data exists, so ClimateXChange carried out a scoping study on whether the presence of drainage could be modelled using remote sensing data presented in the report ‘Detection of peatland drainage with remote sensing’.

The results were promising, and a second phase of work, ‘Comparison of remote sensing approaches for detection of peatland drainage in Scotland’, has refined how this might be taken forward in future.

This evidence assessment looks at the current state of knowledge on the impact of muirburn on peatland and peat soils.

Prescribed burning of moorlands has been used for centuries as a land management tool to remove less productive vegetation, mainly heather, and to encourage new growth. Originally used to increase productivity for sheep and cattle grazing, it is also now widely used to improve the habitat for red grouse. In Scotland, this is referred to as muirburn.

Carrying out muirburn as a land management tool, known as ‘prescribed burning’, is tightly regulated in Scotland, summarised in The Muirburn Code which was last revised in 2011.

Key findings:

• During burning there is a clear loss of vegetation (carbon). However this is replaced as the vegetation recovers during the burn cycle. What is not clear is whether there is a loss of carbon from peat soils.
• The evidence for a net loss of carbon dioxide is unclear.
• The timing of muirburn on peatland is critical, in that the vegetation should be dry enough for it to burn well while at the same time the ground should still be wet enough to prevent combustion of the ground litter and the peat itself.
• There is not enough evidence to judge the impact of vegetation type or age on greenhouse gas emissions.
• The main factor affecting the rate of carbon sequestration post-muirburn is the nature of the recovering vegetation and whether it is grazed or not.