Counting Carbon: Nobel Laureate Professor Ken Byrne’s research at UL will investigate how Ireland can manage its peatland forests for climate and biodiversity

Professor Ken Byrne’s interest in land use and bogs began at a young age. Growing up in Rathangan in Co Kildare, many of the local people were employed by Bord na Móna, including Ken’s father.

“I was very interested in the work that was going on in Bord na Móna and what my father and his colleagues were doing. It was a rural area, and I was also interested in farming and I often worked on a neighbour’s farm. This interest led me to study Agricultural Science at university.”

Ken went on to specialise in forestry as part of his degree at University College Dublin and this gave him a real appreciation for what happens out on the land.

“I was fortunate enough to work with Professor Ted Farrell who was a forest soil scientist and through working with him I developed an interest in soils and peatlands. My interest in field research has grown ever since then. Carbon sequestration in soils and biomass was a growing area of interest in the research community and Ted encouraged me to pursue this area of research during my PhD and Post Doc. We were among the first people in Ireland to carry out research on this topic, it has remained a central theme of my research for 30 years.”

Ken’s research focus on carbon stocks and greenhouse gas exchange in forest and peatland ecosystems has earned him national and international acclaim over the years. His expertise contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the International Science Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Ken was part of the IPCC team honoured with the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, and in 2024 he received the President’s Research Impact and Excellence Award from UL.

This expertise and experience led to Ken secure €2.7m in funding from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine for the PeatFor project. The project sets out to provide a roadmap for the management of Ireland's peatland forests for climate and biodiversity. The University of Limerick is the lead institution on the project working with partners in Trinity College Dublin, Teagasc, University College Dublin.

In Ireland, 272,000 hectares or 38.1% of all forests are on peat soils (NFI 2023) and drainage for forestry increases peat decomposition and the emission of CO2, Ken explains.

“Peatlands cover about 23% of the landscape of Ireland and the majority of them have been disturbed (often by drainage) by agriculture, forestry, or peat removal. These drained peatlands are estimated to lose something like 8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, the bogs that you and I know are being harvested for fuel across the country.

“Many of these forests were planted at a time the expectations of land were different, the main goals were to grow crops for food, grow forests for timber or cut peat for energy, but now we see the downside to what we did in the past.”

Carbon sequestration is the process in which carbon is removed from the atmosphere and stored in the carbon pools of specific habitats, such as above-ground biomass, roots and soil. Undrained peatlands are carbon sinks in that they remove carbon from the atmosphere, drained peatlands are carbon sources. The PeatFor project will set up field sites to put in place experimental frameworks to measure carbon uptake and loss from forests with a particular focus on the soil as this is where most of the carbon is stored.

“With forestry when you plant the forest it takes some carbon from the atmosphere - as far as we know the uptake from the trees will compensate for what is lost from the soil. When the growth rate of the forest is slow this compensatory carbon uptake is reduced. Also, many of these forests are not commercially viable. These should be among the first considered for rewetting, where the drains are blocked with the objective of raising the water table and turning the back into a functioning peatland - or alternatively the area should have some low intensity woodland planted on it.”

The research will focus on specific field sites across Ireland that will deliver first-hand knowledge of carbon cycling and biodiversity in peatland forests.

“At targeted forest sites we will be installing flux towers that can measure the net exchange of carbon between the ecosystem and the atmosphere. In addition, we will measure carbon input to, and loss from the soil which will enable us to separate the trees from the soil in terms of carbon movement. This will allow us to calculate over the course of a year how much carbon the forest is absorbing and how it varies across the seasons” 

The project will train PhD students to become the next generation of forest and soil scientists, and the data generated from the project will be used to inform the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory. This will allow for better estimates of the greenhouse gas balance of Irelands forests and inform policy. 

“We need to find a balance between timber production and environmental and social services. 

“Working on systems out there on the land is fascinating because all land use is highly diverse across space and time and trying to ask the right questions and approach research in a way that facilitates capturing something about that and how its functioning is always challenging and fascinating”