Normally when I’m in a public convenience minding my own business, I’d be a bit alarmed if someone came up behind me and announced, “Hi. I’m Mike”! However, on this occasion I was expecting to meet someone called Mike, though in a rather different kind of bog! I’d arranged to meet up with scientists from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology from Lancaster. They’d agreed to take me to their study site in Upper Teesdale on the Moor House National Nature Reserve, where they are carrying out a long-term study. After a bumpy six mile drive along a hill track, followed by a half hour walk onto the fells, I found myself in a howling wind at Mike Whitfield’s PhD study area on a boggy, peaty moor.
Mike was assisted by Dr Alona Armstrong and there to extract air samples from fixed position containers, set amongst the heather, grasses, lichens, mosses and peatbog itself. The chambers can only be described as small, tin foil covered, ‘daleks’ and a series of timed extractions is taken from the 36 positions. Mike explained the science behind their work and importance of cold, wet peatlands for trapping and storing carbon – a process called sequestration. A simple blog here just isn’t the place to go into it – but suffice to say it affects us all. People like Mike and Alona are trying to uncover what the potential affect of climate change could have on peatlands ability to carry out it’s vital function – I was later shown a colleague’s site where protective frames around other chambers, creating a micro-climate, simulate a one degree increase in mean temperature.
In this seemingly disconnected and remote, bleak bog it wasn’t simple to make a direct relevance between the habitat and the lives of ordinary people. After a while however, I became aware we were under a flightpath, as every so often I could hear a quiet roar as a jet passed overhead, above the low cloud. Now generally when I’m doing photography I hate the streaks of white as airplane con-trails criss-cross a clear blue sky but on this occasion I willed the clouds to part so I could see a plane and make the connection. But a wide-angle lens, to include the peatlands, and a tiny jet at 35,000 feet wasn’t a great combo for successful imagery – and I’m note sure I really got the shot. So the next time I’m on a peatbog, instead of cursing plane trails, I’m going to be looking to the skies trying shoot that missing link!
