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Blanket peat in the Scottish Highlands: timing, cause, spread and the myth of environmental determinism

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Abstract

This contribution describes the geomorphic, stratigraphic, palaeoclimatic, palaeoecological and 14C dating evidence for the timing within the present interglacial of blanket peat initiation and extension (‘spread’) from five localities throughout the upland and northern regions of Scotland. The results suggest that blanket peat was common or abundant over much of the highland landscape within a few thousand years of the beginning of the Holocene period. Blanket peat developed either as an inevitable but rapid end-stage to soil development in this generally cold and wet climate or was promoted by climatic change. There is no evidence from this data-set that blanket peat developed as a result of anthropogenic activities. It is suggested, indeed, that farming communities successfully resisted the natural spread of peat across their fields.

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Acknowledgements

In work that has covered a decade, there are too many people to thank comprehensively here, and I apologise for any omissions. I must give thanks for their support to staff at Historic Scotland, most notably to Patrick Ashmore but on different projects to Noel Fojut, Richard Hingley and Sarah Govan, to Robin Turner of the National Trust for Scotland, Alison Sheridan of the National Museums of Scotland and Terry Keatinge of Scottish Natural Heritage, to Gordon Cook of the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre and Douglas Harkness at NERC, and to colleagues who have worked on these different projects including Coralie Mills, Jim Rideout, John Barber, Althea Davies, Eileen Tisdall, Elspeth Reid, Andrew Haggart, Andy Moir, Anthony Newton, Theo Skinner, Robert Sands, Amelia Pannett, Niall Sharples and Clare Wilson.

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  1. School of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Stirling, Stirling, FK9 4LA, UK

    Richard Tipping

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Tipping, R. Blanket peat in the Scottish Highlands: timing, cause, spread and the myth of environmental determinism. Biodivers Conserv 17, 2097–2113 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-007-9220-4

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