What 5,190 km of hill track tells us about who the uplands are really for — and why we should start talking about taking some of them out

This week's edition of Ground Cover.

Surfaced vehicle tracks are widespread across GB uplands, yet their extent and environmental footprint have until now been poorly quantified. Using remote sensing and a semi-automated detection model...

Conservationists emphasise importance of protecting nesting sites used by ‘strongly faithful’ red-listed species

In this guest blog, RSPB Senior Policy Officer Tom Aspinall presents his views on the journey from fire risk to resilience for UK peatlands.

Using 25–30 cm Umbra synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery combined with ground validation of our observations, we introduce a method to track the phenology of emperor penguins during the Antarctic ....

The Woodland Carbon Code (WCC) describes itself (see here) as ‘the UK’s government-backed standard for creating new woodlands that generate high-integrity carbon credits’ and is managed by Scottish Fo...

Prescribed moorland burning in Great Britain exposes 2.3 million people to PM2.5 levels exceeding the WHO 24 h guideline limit, Graham, Ailish M, Spracklen, Dominick V, Shewring, Mike P, Douglas, David J T, Pope, Richard J, Chipperfield, Martyn P

We examine energy balance and evapotranspiration dynamics in a shallow peatland as an analogue for projected climate change impacts in deeper peatlands. Across nine growing seasons, we document simil...

The quest to identify and map the world’s bogs, fens, and swamps

Little Egrets continue to rise whilst Blue Tits are declining. Read on to learn more about the ups and downs of the UK’s birds.

Peatlands are central to climate change, yet basic questions remain unanswered. A global research community has mapped out what we most urgently need to know.

Tests of conservation interventions, and especially long-term experiments, are most likely to succeed when there is a broad partnership commitment to evidence-based approaches amongst practitioners a....

Exclusive: Report finds Natural England has created no new SSSIs, which protect areas from development, since 2023

The central Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, China.This study used the DigiBog_Boreal model to simulate 300-year peatland dynamics under road disturbance, asses…