A national peatland database for the Republic of Ireland (AUGER project)

As part of the AUGER project, funded by the Irish Environmental Project Agency, a peatland sampling campaign was conducted between May 2017 and July 2019 across the Republic of Ireland to ascertain a wide range of peatland properties. A multi-stage (hierarchical) stratified sampling with three stages was devised. 50 ombrotrophic raised and blanket bogs (270 sampling points, 4024 soil samples) were surveyed across prevalent land use categories: natural, grassland, forestry, peat extraction (both industrial and domestic) as well as various management options (deep drained, shallow drained, rewetted). Physical landscape features were determined using a list of criteria. Vegetation data was collected using vegetation relevées. Peat sampling was conducted with a ‘Russian’ peat sampler. Laboratory analysis of disturbed and non-disturbed samples yielded values for 15 peat properties and peat depth. In addition, aater table monitoring was conducted at 8 peatland sites (natural lowland blanket bog as well as under forestry, grassland, domestic peat extraction and natural raised bog as well as under forestry, both drained and rewetted, and under domestic peat extraction), using a OTT Orpheus Mini logger over a period of 2 years.