CreditNature
In the latter half of 2020, Bunloit Rewilding was lucky enough to be involved with an exciting and innovative project led by the rewilding consultancy Ecosulis. Called CreditNature, the three-month feasibility study was funded through Innovate UK’s Sustainable Innovation Fund, and aimed to integrate a range of cutting edge technologies to create a platform underpinned by real world data, which would enable the development of carbon, biodiversity and rewilding (ecosystem recovery) credits.
Using Bunloit estate as a test case, the project involved working with a selection of innovative sub-contractors using new technologies to map out initial soil carbon and biodiversity data from the estate and explore how this data could be collated via an on-line platform and using to develop metrics for current and future credit schemes.
The companies involved were:
· Ecosulis – The project lead who developed the concept of the rewilding/ ecosystem-recovery credit and undertook a desktop habitat assessment of the estate using the DEFRA Biodiversity Metric Tool 2.0.
· NatureMetrics - This innovative UK biotech company provides commercial eDNA sampling kits to monitor soil and water biodiversity via DNA. They provided kits and analysis of 42 soil samples – looking at the eDNA of fungi and fauna.
· Land Life - A high-tech Dutch reforestation company with a mission to reforest the world’s degraded land at scale. They supplied a desktop carbon baseline using a combination of drone and field surveys.
· Assist Software - A Romanian software outsourcing company who led on the development of the test online platform.
Further information and updates on the development of the Rewilding/ Ecosystem Recovery credit can be found by following Ecosulis via their blog link above. The rest of this blog sets out the process and findings of the project regarding the Bunloit Estate itself.
Key Outputs
The CreditNature project gave us a useful insight into the situation at our Bunloit Estate and established several core concepts and initial insights that laid the foundation for the deeper-level baseline surveys that we have been undertaking this summer.
Key to this was the stratification (dividing up) of the estate into distinct ‘eco-parcels’ based on different habitat types, aligned with the open source UK Habitat codes. For ease of analysis, these were kept at the highest level – which gave us 5 land types to investigate – conifer plantations, wetland, heathland and scrub, grassland and (native) woodland. These are shown in the table below:
Once we had established the eco-parcels, the partnership then identified 42 soil sample points, where soil samples were collected to provide a representation of each habitat type. As we were in the middle of lockdown by this point, sampling was undertaken by our intrepid Head of Forestry Helge, with support from a visiting student from the University of Highlands and Islands. The image below shows the estate eco-parcels identified, with the 42 numbered soil sample positions, recorded using grid references and what3words locations to be able to re-visit for repeat sampling.
Key Findings
The soil samples were tested in-situ using an Agrocares infra-red soil scanner as provided by Land Life, with soils samples packaged and sent for eDNA testing the next day by Nature Metrics. The scanners gave us a wide range of soil organic carbon (SOC) with which to compare future sampling – although as we were unable to do density analysis of the soils, we were not able to fully calculate soil organic carbon (SOC) volumes across the estate. This gave us a focus area that we are developing further within our current baselining activities.
Separate to the soil sampling, Land Life also produced a desktop analysis of the expected carbon stocks within the Above (AGB) and Below Ground (BGB) carbon ‘pools’ on the estate – essentially the standing biomass in trees and their roots. Again, as they were unable to visit the estate due to travel restrictions, this analysis took the form of a desk-based assessment of the available scientific literature. In this, Land Life assessed carbon stocks of the tree types within our habitats based on the most suitable scientific studies, focusing on the Scottish Highlands where possible. This gave us an indicative range of 44,274 – 197,081 tonnes CO2 (tCO2) for biomass on the estate, as shown opposite. This equates to the carbon emissions from running 11,000 – 50,000 medium sized cars for a year.
On the biodiversity side, the eDNA analysis for fungi and flora provided some interesting results. Here is an extract from the Nature Metrics summary report:
“A total of 1,168 fungal operational taxonomic units (OTUs) and 352 faunal OTUs were detected across the samples. Fungal taxa richness was lowest in the ‘coniferous woodland – semi natural’ and faunal taxa richness was highest in the ‘bog’. Spatial clustering of diversity was more apparent in soil fauna than fungi. Samples collected from the ‘bog’ and ‘modified grassland’ habitats had distinct fungal and faunal community compositions. While the three categories of coniferous woodland habitats appear to have similar soil communities, ‘broadleaved mixed and yew woodland’ and ‘coniferous woodland – semi natural’ differed from each other.”
As might be expected, the eDNA analysis corroborated what we had been told by many of the conferees in our initial 12 months of discussions. i.e.:
1. Coniferous woodlands (our non-native plantations) had the lowest biodiversity richness and diversity within both fauna and fungal soil samples
2. Our peatlands and grasslands have the highest and most distinct biodiversity in the soil samples
This can be seen in the visuals of the fungi DNA testing as shown in the graphic opposite. Interestingly, the clear-felled plantation in Borlum Wood on the far right shows a high level of fungi diversity. This can be attributed to the fact that the clear felling has caused a lot of disturbance, and the parcel is now in flux which is creating opportunities for increased biodiversity (at a fungal level at least!).
We also had some interesting feedback when we sent the eDNA data to Plantlife UK, who are leading on plant surveys at Bunloit this summer. Early analysis from the datasets by Plantlife UK - who are leading on plant surveys at Bunloit this summer – identified several rare and threatened species. These included fungi Russula lilacea and Clavicorona taxophila. We are looking forward to finding out more as Plantlife delve into the datasets further.
Summary
As our first foray into estate sampling and baselines, the CreditNature project gave us a large amount of interesting and useful information with which to start building our deeper-level estate baselining activity. Despite contending with lockdowns and travel restrictions, the partnership was able to collect valuable datasets that are now being fed into future innovation from Ecosulis, as well as identifying key focus areas for our ongoing estate research programme. Huge thanks to all the partners involved.
As we go further into our estate carbon and biodiversity surveying and modelling, we’ll be updating this blog with further findings. To keep up to date with all our activities please sign up to our newsletter below.
Ben Hart