We re-visited our bare peat restoration trial at the end of September, and were really surprised to see how well the vegetation is now colonising. Lots of germinated grass, along with a high cover of small mosses.
For the first time, we have chosen to leave our large Gerlach Troughs out over winter to see if we catch more sediment – we gathered them in last autumn under the assumption the snow would come and lie for a long time, but in fact the site remained bare most of the time to Xmas. This meant we missed a lot of sediment release.
That said, we are taking a big risk as the snow pack gets deep here and tends to slide in the spring once the thaw sets in – our troughs may well get crushed, but in the interests of science we need to try it in order to be able to refute or accept the null hypothesis…”there is no risk of Gerlach Troughs being ruined by snow pack glide on the upper reaches of the Monadhliath Plateau”!
