Bowland, Water Industry Natural Environment Programme

As part of the Bowland, Water Industry Natural Environment Programme (WINEP), our catchment team, undertook an estate wide moorland vegetation survey, to assess the condition of the Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI).

Through ongoing collaboration with Natural England (NE), the team were aware of the ongoing NE project investigating and collecting information on all aspects of Peat Quality, Quantity and Connectivity across the uplands and lowlands of England. One of the deliverables planned is a new England Peat Map.

Whilst the collection of the peat depth information was not integral to the WINEP vegetation survey, our catchment team felt the information would be useful to both the NE project and for us as an organisation to more accurately assess our potential carbon resource. As a result, the survey, conducted over the last two winters, was extended to measure the peat depth on every hectare of Bowland moorland (approximately 6000 data points).

This data is licensed under CC BY, an open data licence, in order to make it freely available to other potential customers, stakeholders or interested organisations. You can find out more about CC BY here.

United Utilities peat data is licensed under CC BY 4.0