Applying InSAR to investigate peatland surface motion at Slamannan Bog, North Lanarkshire
2025
Bruce, Catriona | Ou, Qi
The effective management of Scotland’s peatlands is of national interest, both from the perspective of climate mitigation and from one of nature conservation. Within recent years, growing attention has turned to the use of peatland surface motion as a potential means to monitor peat condition. This research applies InSAR (interferometric synthetic aperture radar) to investigate peatland surface motion at Slamannan Bog, North Lanarkshire. Through the use of the open-source package LiCSBAS, a time series of displacement is generated for the period 12 March 2015 to 29 February 2024. The results indicate a long-term trend of subsidence, with an average vertical velocity of -3.8 mm/yr across the study area. However, when referring to incremental displacements, it is shown that this trend is not linear and instead, is seemingly driven by prominent episodes of subsidence during drought and/or extreme heat. Further work should be dedicated to exploring the physical mechanisms of peat recovery (or lack thereof) from these climatic extremes. While this research indicated that the peat surface elevation did not make a full recovery – potentially linked to the irreversible compaction of peat soil – an enhanced understanding of this mechanism would allow for more informed recommendations for future peatland management.
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