A West Yorkshire moor stores carbon equivalent to the annual emissions released by a million cars, researchers have said.
Marsden Moor, a popular spot for tourists and walkers between Manchester and Leeds , is known for its blanket peat bogs stretching across the 2,300-hectare landscape.
To mark World Bog Day, a team from the University of Leeds geography school have released the results of a four-year study into the layers of peat across the entire estate.
They assessed 2,290 locations with the help of National Trust volunteers and rangers, measuring the peat depths and stratigraphy – the make-up of different peat layers that were created over time.
The researchers were then able to estimate the moorland has a total of around 21 million cubic tonnes of peatland.
This means it can store between one million and 1.5 million tonnes, which is also equivalent to 250,000 round-the-world flights, they said.
The work follows a smaller 2019 study of a 350-hectare site known as Blakeley Clough in the Wessenden Valley on the moors, which found around 300,000 tonnes of carbon had been sequestered there.
Further studies are ongoing at 60 of the sample locations to analyse how bulk density and carbon content varies with location and depth.
This will facilitate a more robust final site-wide carbon estimate, according to the researchers.
The National Trust said the study highlights the importance of preserving and restoring the moorlands to prevent vast amounts of carbon from being released into the atmosphere.
Palaeoecologist Antony Blundell, a senior researcher into peatlands at the University of Leeds who led the study, said: “A good carbon storage estimate is extremely important as it can illustrate the value of these moorlands and their role in mitigating climate change.
“The work of the volunteers has allowed us to gather much more data than we would normally have available, so we expect a really robust estimate of carbon storage to be derived from this project.”
As well as revealing the capacity of the peat for holding carbon, the team said it was also able to learn a lot more detail about how the peatlands were formed and their current condition.
Through some initial radiocarbon dating, they confirmed the peat started to form locally in some areas as early as 10,000 years ago and then spread from Mesolithic times to blanket the landscape.
Dr Blundell said: “Peat on average forms at up to 1mm per year, and the deepest areas of peat discovered were over five metres deep.
“In some locations, some depths showed evidence of Stone Age fires while other sites at other depths had evidence of ancient trees including pine and birch, and others again showed partially degraded vegetation.”
Restoration efforts on the West Yorkshire moor are ongoing but National Trust said such work is an urgent issue on a global scale.
The charity’s rangers have been working alongside Moors to the Future, Yorkshire Water , and the West Yorkshire Combined Authority to restore bare patches of peat, to plant Sphagnum moss and other native species of plant, and to lower the risk of moorland fires, which can damage the peat and allow carbon to disperse.
To help the process of planting more Sphagnum moss, the trust has set up its own Sphagnum moss nursery – the first established by the charity – where plugs of the wonder plant are being cultivated for the first time, ready to be planted out this autumn.
Tia Crouch, peat ecologist for the National Trust, said it owns around 25,000 hectares of peatland across England , Wales and Northern Ireland, of which 70% (17,500ha) is currently in a degraded condition.
“Healthy peatlands are a ‘climate action trump card’. Our vision is to have all the degraded peatlands in our care under restoration by 2040, aiding the recovery of peatland and the wildlife it supports and saving 140,000 tonnes of carbon emissions per year,” she said.
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