Measuring peatland resilience through satellite data recovery timescales

Abstract:

There is widespread interest in the resilience of peatlands, especially in the face of climate change, but few real-world measures of this critical metric. Resilience can be defined as the rate at which a system recovers from perturbation, and can therefore be estimated by monitoring the time taken for a measure of ecosystem health to return to within its normal range following a disturbance event. Disturbance events can include natural occurrences such as drought or wildfire, or human impacts such as peat cutting or managed burns. Satellite data can be used to monitor both disturbance occurrence, and measures of ecosystem health over multi-year timescales. In this project we have so far developed two methods of estimating the resilience of peatlands. The first considers soil surface moisture as an indicator of peatland health, and uses Sentinel-1 SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) data to monitor its recovery from the 2018 European drought event. The second considers vegetation as an indicator of peatland health, and uses Sentinel-2 NDVI (Normalised Difference Vegetation Index) data to monitor its recovery following managed burns. Results from both methods show variations in resilience within and between peatland sites across Great Britain, associated with interactions of climate and human land management.