Effect of Dikes and Past Peat Exploitation on Lnd Cover of Raised Bog: A Case Study in Halland, Sweden

Sammanfattning

The primary functions of bogs and peatlands as major carbon reservoirs, together with their roles in hydrological regulation and biodiversity conservation, make them essential landscape features in the modern era. Consequently, it is important to investigate and understand the factors that affect these ecosystems in order to improve their preservation and restoration, thereby enabling them to continue fulfilling their natural ecological functions. Due to the current state of the global climate and peatlands properties to store water, makes them an important land class to battle and be resilient to a warming world. The purpose of this case study is therefore to investigate how land cover changes on a raised bog named Undarsmosse and if there are possible relationships between land cover change and different human made features like: dikes and former peat quarrying. The study also investigates whether or not land cover has changed through time and at which rate the change might be happening, a brief analysis of possible effects of changing land cover on biodiversity is also included. To test these objectives the study revolved around digitising aerial data into land cover data through GIS to eventually test the relationships through regression and summary statistics followed by a short vegetation inventory. The findings of the case study are the relatively strong correlation between major dikes and their relationship with land cover changing from bog into forest, where areas closer to the major dikes experienced higher conversion from bog to forest. The study also found that land cover had changed from 32% bog to 24% and that the change is two times faster in the later period signaling that the change might accelerate. There is also a risk that within 139 years from 2017 that the open bog surface is lost and taken over by forest. The change of land cover may also negatively impact biodiversity.