Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Charlie McConalogue along with Minister of State Pippa Hackett have today announced that their Department is investing in two key projects that support the storing of carbon in our soils.
One of the projects will establish the extent of peat soil in agricultural management, whilst the second will monitor soil moisture levels to better understand the removal and loss of carbon from the soils. Both projects will help achieve the Government’s climate objectives, particularly in respect of grasslands on drained organic soils.
Making the announcement Minister McConologue said: “These projects will provide hugely valuable data on the moisture content of our soils, the location of carbon rich soils, and the historical land use change that peatlands have undergone in the last 200 years. They will also complement the data which will be collected from the recently announced National Agricultural Soil Carbon Observatory, the soil sampling and biodiversity studies, and the learnings from the new EIP projects on rewetting farmed peatlands, which will all help deliver on climate action and biodiversity through increased information and understanding.”
Senator Hackett added: “I am delighted to be in a position to launch the National Soil Moisture Monitoring Network here in my own County of Offaly, today. Our soil is one of the most important tools we have to address the climate and biodiversity crisis. The way we manage and farm it heavily influences the carbon it can sequester and store. These projects will provide us with a fuller understanding of the nature of our country’s soil and will help us in the delivery of the Government’s objectives on climate action. "
The projects will deliver increased and refined data and soil maps that inform the monitoring, reporting and verification of Greenhouse Gases (GHG) through two key actions: identification of potential areas for reduced management intensity and the development of a National Soil Moisture Monitoring network.
- RePEAT project “A Modern Resurvey of Mapped Irish Peatlands to Refine Assessment of Land Use Change and Progress Greenhouse Gas Removal and Emissions Inventories”
The soil maps that are currently available are not at a scale to accurately identify, at field level, the location of peat soils. Accurate peatland maps will be part of the requirements to incorporate reduced management of farmed peatlands into a larger agri-environment programme under Ireland’s CAP strategic Plan.
Research is therefore required to enable the precise identification of agricultural land use and intensity of land use on former peatlands, which will in turn facilitate better management of these systems and help to mitigate national emissions.
A Trinity College Dublin and National University of Ireland, Galway research proposal will be co-funded with the Environmental Protection agency to address this gap, using the Bog Commissioners Maps (a survey of over one million acres of bogs in Ireland between 1810 and 1814) as the basis of its research.
The Commissioners Report on the Nature and Extent of Bogs in Ireland represents the first inventory of a natural ecosystem in Ireland, and likely one of the most detailed assessments of an ecosystem at this scale in the world at the time. The project plans to acquire a high-quality digital version of the complete series of the Bog Commissioners Maps and other available peat maps in order to facilitate detailed evaluation and comparison to both the Copernicus programme and recent very high-resolution aerial imagery, which will in turn enable precise identification of agricultural areas that occur on drained carbon rich soils.
- Establish the scientific infrastructure required for a “National Soil Moisture Monitoring Network”.
A better scientific understanding of soil moisture dynamics is urgently needed as the amount of water held in the soil influences a wide range of soil and plant processes, as well as the soil-atmosphere energy balance. This affects, for example, weather, plant growth and nutrient uptake, nutrient and carbon dynamics, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The removal of soil moisture through the draining of peat soils, and the subsequent emission of CO2 as a result, is one example of the effect soil moisture levels can have on soil.
Funding will be provided to the National Soil Moisture Monitoring Network, a working group on agro-meterology which comprises researchers from University College Dublin, Teagasc, National University of Ireland, Galway, Trinity College Dublin, and Dublin City University to purchase soil moisture monitoring equipment to enable Ireland to develop a national soil moisture measurement network.
A move towards more accurate measurement-based (rather than modelled) real-time reporting of soil moisture status would be of enormous benefit to a range of stakeholders. These include farmers and others involved in agriculture, foresters and bioenergy suppliers, those involved in peatland conservation and restoration, flood and drought forecasters, Irish water and other managers of both surface and groundwater resources, and many stakeholders from education and research, including Met Eireann, in the form of improved weather forecasts and climatological understanding.
Further information
Under Budget 2020, €3m was allocated to pilot new agri-environmental schemes to support the Government’s Climate Action Plan objectives in 2020. Under the Plan, the sector has been assigned a target to achieve 26.8 Mt CO2 eq abatement through LULUCF actions over the period 2021 to 2030, which includes 4.4 Mt CO2 eq cumulative abatement realised by reaching 40,000ha of reduced management intensity of grasslands on drained organic soils.
EIP Rewetting of Farmed Peatland Pilot Project
A call for a new locally-led European Innovation Partnership (EIP) project on reduced management of farmed peatlands was announced in August 2020. This project will provide lessons learned to scale up the actions and measures into a larger agri-environment programme under Ireland’s CAP Strategic Plan. The call, using a bottom-up process, asks groups to put forward projects outlining concrete actions on peatlands under agricultural management that will:
- Protect the carbon stock and restore sequestration associated with drained peatlands under agricultural management.
- Maximise other ecosystem service co-benefits such as protection of biodiversity, water quality and water regulation.
- Build resilience to the impacts of climate change at catchment/landscape level.
Two groups - Nature Based Agri Solutions Limited and Green Restoration Ireland - have been successful in their applications.
National Agricultural Soil Carbon Observatory
The National Agricultural Soil Carbon Observatory announced in November 2020 will comprise up to 10 “Flux Towers” on agricultural systems across a range of soil types, adding value to existing projects including the industry co-funded Teagasc SignPost farms and the Agricultural Catchments Programme.
The resulting “National Agricultural Soil Carbon Observatory” will place Ireland at the forefront of EU carbon sequestration research and will enable Ireland to:
- Better quantify and model soil carbon emissions and sinks from/on agricultural land,
- Enable mitigation measures to increase carbon sequestration to be included in the national inventory,
- Participate in the EU ICOS (Integrated Carbon Observation System) network
- Enable Ireland to benefit from the 2018 EU Effort Sharing Regulation.
ENDS