Drying in European peatlands

A new contribution to the PAGES C-PEAT working group analyzes testate amoeba-derived hydrological reconstructions from 31 peatlands across Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia, and Continental Europe to examine changes in peatland surface wetness during the last 2,000 years.

"Widespread drying of European peatlands in recent centuries", written by Graeme Swindles et al. and published in Nature Geoscience, shows that European peatlands have undergone substantial, widespread drying during the last ~300 years.

This marked recent transition in the hydrology of European peatlands is concurrent with compound pressures including climatic drying, warming and direct human impacts on peatlands, although these factors vary among regions and individual sites. Read the paper here.

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