Rob Marrs - Carbon management and fire in the British Uplands: to burn or not to burn

The use of fire in the British uplands is a major controversy in British conservation, partly because it is used as part of a management strategy designed to benefit sporting interests. Indeed, in November there was a discussion in Parliament about this, instigated by a petition to ban driven-grouse shooting. In my view it is not as simple as a ban or no ban, the situation is very complex. First, there are two types of fire, management fires and wildfire. Management fires (prescribed burning) are applied in winter to remove biomass and re-set an ecological succession; these are deemed essential for grouse management but negatively by many conservationists because of the reported damaging impacts on carbon sequestration, damage to habitat (especially peat formation), potable water supplies and flood risk. On the other hand, if you have a fire-evolved ecosystem then it is a no-brainer that it is likely to burn, and summer wildfire risk is a serious possibility. Wildfire risk is expected to increase in the warmer, drier summers predicted under current global warming scenarios. Hence we need to evaluate risk of prescribed burning versus wildfire.
After a brief general outline of the conflicting issues, I will outline some work already published where we attempt to consider prescribed fire versus wildfire using a matrix-modelling approach (develoepd by Kath Allen). I will highlight a major problem with our model. Thereafter, I will digress and illustrate how some new work originated quite fortuitously that allows us to plug this important gap in out model. This new work has come about through joint work with Professor Chiverrell. In brief we can now measure the impacts of prescribed fire on net carbon accumulation rates in the underlying peat. I will finish with a view on how we can develop this new work into a revised model for moorland at one of Britain’s flagship Ecological Change Network sites.