Peatland Futures and ReWet Team meeting
7th/8th December 2023
ReWet Project PI's Dr Owen Fenton, Dr Pat Tuohy, Prof. Mark Healy and Dr Eve Daly, along with ReWet PostDoc Dr Dave O'Leary attended the Peatland Futures Workshop at University of Galway. This event was organised by Dr Terry Morley. The purpose of this workshop was to discuss the need for a Peatland Centre of Excellence.
The ReWet team took this opportuity to network with peatland experts from other governement agencies and academic and cultural institutions and projects. Later the team met for a rare social outing enjoying Galways social scene.
The next morning the ReWet team met in full, including PhD candidate Hilary Pierce and project technician Asaf Shnel, met in the University of Galway to discuss the current status of the project and the plans for the new year. A good discussion resulted in a division of labour between the project members to continue to collect and analysis the many forms of data that the team are using to inform the science of rewetting agricultural peatlands.
Irish Quaternary Association of Ireland (iQUA) Autumn Symposium
1st December 2023
Dave attended the autumn symposium of IQUA in Dublin. Here Dave presented his ongoing work on creating a national peatland map of Ireland, with a focus on the Transition zone between Peat and non-Peat soils. Two of the ReWet sites featured in this presenation as they are both considered transition zones areas. The presentation highlighted the work of ReWet in the context of national peatland research and are acting as valuable sites for the validation of this national peatland map.
Field visit with Project Auger Team
30th November 2023
The ReWet Team welcomed Dr Flo Renou-Wilson from the Auger project to two of the ReWet sites. The purpose of the visit was to learn about categorising the peatland type under the Project Auger classification scheme. Dr Renou-Wilson is an expert in the peatlands of Ireland and her input to the ReWet project was invaluable. Cores were taken on 2 ReWet sites and the peat types were classified as a field based exercise. The lessons learned will be taken to all ReWet sites to aid in their classification
Irish National Hydrologry Conference
14th November 2023
Hilary Pierce presented a ReWET project poster at this national event in Tullamore as part of her PhD. This poster showcases some of the data that the ReWET project is collecting with high temporal and spatial resolution.
This data will allow the quantification of the impact of rewetting this soils in Ireland and can be used as example sites for the rewetting of other similar sites around the country.
REWET Poster_Hilary_Pierce_2023-11-09.pdf
GeoScience 2023
7th November 2023
Dr Dave O'Leary attended the GeoScience 2023 event organsied by the Geological Survey, Ireland in Dublin Castle. This event showcases ongoing projetcs and work being conducted by the Geological Survey, Ireland and their partners. Before starting with Teagasc, Dave completed a GSI short call project on the creation of a national organic soil map using airborne Radiometric data. This poster shows how one of the ReWET sites is correcly identified as a peaty soil.
The ReWET project sites will be part of the validation of this national map, and consequently this national peatlands map can be used to identify similar sites around the country.
Left: Photo of Dave presenting this poster at the event.
Follow this link to view the Poster
Undergraduate Fieldwork
21st - 23rd August 2023
Under the supervision of Dr Eve Daly, and accompanied by Dave and Hilary, two final year students visited two of the ReWET sites in order to conduct research for their final year projects. Their degree program is Earth and Ocean Sciences and is run from the University of Galway.
Both students focused on one ReWET site, each with differente research questions. On one site the focus was on mapping the transition between peat and non-peat soils. The second site was focused on investigating the depth of peat. Both students used Electrical Resitivity Tomography and gauge coring ground work alongside Drone Photogrammetry to build a high resolution topography map of each site. Data was loaded into QGIS for analysis.
This field work acts as an initial investigation into the use of Geophysical methods for mapping peat on these sites and will help to guide future field work on all sites.
Teagasc Grasslands on Peat Workshop
10th/11th May 2023
Sixty participants attended the first day of the ‘Grassland Peat Agriculture Workshop’, which was hosted by the new Teagasc Climate Centre and the ReWet (Teagasc and University of Galway) project at Gurteen College in Tipperary on May 10th 2023 followed by a visit to NASCO and ReWet site located on site.
Presenters from Ireland, the UK and Denmark outlined the scientific, engineering and social issues facing the managment of grasslands on peat soils.
ReWet project members Dr Pat Tuohy, Dr Owen Fenton organised this meeting and Dr Eve Daly presented some of the methods the ReWet Team will be using to map peatland extend and monitor rewetting on the 12 ReWet sites across the midlands.
For more information click here . To see some of the presentations show click here.
Galway Research Day
2nd May 2023
Hilary Pierce presented a poster at the University of Galway School of Natural Sciences Reasearch day, showcasing the ReWET project and her role within it. This was an oportunity for researchers within the school to highlight the work that they are doing and the ReWET project poster proved to of interest to many people present
REWET Preview_Poster_Hilary_Pierce_2023-05-02.pdf