ABSTRACT Biodiversity and nature‐based carbon offsets are central to strategies addressing biodiversity loss and climate change. Their credibility depends on permanence—the expectation that biodiversity gains or sequestered carbon persist at least as long as the impacts they compensate for, or in perpetuity. Yet ecosystems are dynamic and increasingly exposed to disturbance, making perpetual outcomes difficult to guarantee. Despite this, many offset programs rely on fixed durations and static assumptions ill‐suited to managing long‐term risks, creating a structural misalignment between ecological permanence and the safeguards intended to secure it. To assess this misalignment, we reviewed three decades of literature to identify risks to long‐term durability and strategies for managing them. We developed a typology spanning three domains. Non‐physical risks, such as weak governance and limited data transparency, were most frequently reported, often co‐occurred, and enabled other failures. Physical risks such as fire, storms, or flooding cause material damage and are intensifying with climate change. Methodological risks, including oversimplified metrics and flawed design, expose structural weaknesses in offset systems. Our typology provides a framework for assessing permanence risks and strengthening offset governance. Credible, enduring offsets are achievable, provided robust risk management and adaptive governance are aligned with ecological realities.

Manual chamber-based carbon flux measurements are frequently used to capture terrestrial carbon cycle processes over vegetated areas. Light response curves, achieved by sequential shading, enable obtaining model parameters of light compensation points, maximum photosynthetic rates and dark respiration. However, light conditions in the field are sometimes, or in higher northern latitudes frequently limited, especially in darker seasons and areas with frequent cloud and fog, which questions the robustness of fitted model parameters. Artificial light therefore offers a crucial way to assess and address these potential limitations, especially recent advances in LED lights with improved wavelength spectra and irradiance. However, previous LED lights were fixed on the chamber top, blocking out natural light, heavy and with a high-power demand unsuitable for remote field deployment. Here we tested a handheld LED torch as a flexible, low-power and low-weight option. We investigated the wavelength spectrum and photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) output under controlled conditions and applied it under light limiting field conditions. Increased PAR from short-term measurements did not increase chamber temperature significantly but improved confidence in fitted light response curves, especially for situations with higher flux variability.

Many UK blanket bog peatlands are degraded due to historical management including drainage, leading to reduced biodiversity, carbon sequestration and water storage. Currently, much restoration efforts including rewetting and revegetation strategies are being deployed aiming to restore habitats towards intact and ecohydrologically functioning ecosystems. However, it remains unclear how these efforts affect the key microbial consumers, testate amoebae (TA), especially their functional traits, and whether TA can be used as a generic tool to monitor the long-term hydrological restoration success. This study compared TA communities and their key functional traits at one intact and three near-intact sites versus three modified blanket bog sites with different habitat conditions (i.e., least modified, post-restoration, and degraded) to assess their environmental responses, bioindicator potential and explore their possible functional contribution to ecosystems in the process of recovery. The results showed: 1) TA community composition gradually changes from degraded to intact sites in both Sphagnum and surface peat, with distinct dominant TA species in each; 2) soil moisture, Sphagnum cover, and phosphorus content strongly relate to TA composition; 3) Hyalosphenia subflava and Corythion dubium indicate dry conditions, while Archerella flavum and Amphitrema wrightianum are indicators of wet conditions; 4) significantly higher community-weighted mean values of TA traits (biovolume, aperture width, siliceous tests) in surface peat at the least modified areas suggest TA's strong role in carbon and silica cycling following rewetting. Our findings support TA as bioindicators for tracking habitat hydrological conditions and restoration progress in blanket bogs, effectively linking community composition to ecosystem functions.

Heather (Calluna vulgaris)-dominated peatlands are important biodiversity habitats, often shaped by historical management. In the UK, these habitats were traditionally burnt to rejuvenate vegetation for grazing. Heather burning intensified over the last two centuries for red grouse (Lagopus lagopus scoticus) management, creating a mosaic of vegetation composition and ages for shelter, foraging and nesting of many rare upland birds. More recently, burning has been claimed to negatively impact peatlands and associated key ecosystem services, including carbon storage. Regulation has consequently tightened, with burning replaced by cutting or no heather management. However, surprisingly little is known regarding long-term management effects and evidence of negative burning impacts remains contested. Here, we examine how these three management approaches affect elemental composition of two principal food plants, heather and cotton-grass (Eriophorum spp.) across three British upland peatlands over ten years. We find that: 1) heather shoot nutrition significantly improved following management (mainly increasing Mn, P, N, Na, Zn, and, for burning only, Fe and K and decreasing Al) compared to no management, 2) management benefits were most pronounced post-burning, and often for longer than post-cutting, 3) impacts were primarily evident in heather shoots and nutrient levels generally realigned over nine years post-management, and 4) cotton-grass, especially flower heads, showed significantly increased Mn on burnt plots. These elemental benefits (Fe, N, Mn, P) are important for carbon uptake, egg formation (K, Zn), avian breeding success and grazing animals (P). This study highlights the value of long-term, holistic monitoring when assessing peatland management strategies.

In a previous _Mires and Peat_ article, Bacon _et al._ (2017) questioned ten common assumptions frequently made about peatlands “_in the academic literature, practitioner reports and the popular media which are either ambiguous or in some cases incorrect_”. In a similar vein, here, we critically examine ten claims frequently made by the UK governmental, non-governmental organisations, popular media and scientists in relation to the effects of prescribed burning of heather on peatlands. The ten claims are: 1. Prescribed heather burning causes a net peat carbon loss and contributes to the climate crisis; 2. Fire and heather dominance are a result of recent management changes; 3. Prescribed heather burning reduces _Sphagnum_ moss abundance and peat formation; 4. Rewetting reduces heather dominance and thus protects peatlands against wildfire; 5. Cessation of heather burning results in wetter peat, less heather cover and no need to burn; 6. Seventy-five percent of global heather moorland is found in the UK; 7. Prescribed heather burning causes water colour and quality issues; 8. Prescribed heather burning causes flooding; 9. Peatlands offer huge carbon sequestration potential and are climate change ‘saviours’; and 10. Prescribed heather burning causes loss of biodiversity. We critically examine the evidence surrounding each of these claims and use our findings to make policy and research recommendations for those interested in the future management of UK peatlands and to facilitate an informed and unbiased debate. The key findings of our assessment are that: (a) government agencies and policymakers need to **re-examine the strengths and limitations of the evidence base and be wary of generalisations** around management needs and options on heather-dominated peatlands, especially for prescribed burning; (b) **researchers need to fully account for potential site-specific and pre-management differences and limitations in temporal and spatial scales**, especially in urgently needed systematic reviews; (c) in any future work, all **major alternative management scenarios should be compared adequately and robustly to burning and assessed** for short-term (disturbance) and long-term (trajectory) impacts across appropriate landscape scales, so that management effects (benefits and risks) on ecosystems, their functions and services can be reliably identified to inform policy.

IntroductionUnderstanding carbon flows within ecosystems is key to quantifying the impacts of land-use change in the climate. However, while the net exchange of CO2 between the ecosystem and atmosphere indicates global warming potentials, partitioning into individual flux components is needed to understand sinks and sources, residence times, and sensitivities to land-use impacts. Scaling from research site to region requires modelling evaluated against in situ measurements, but there is often a mismatch between outputs of process models (e.g., soil heterotrophic respiration (Rh)) and site-measured parameters (e.g., total soil surface respiration (Rs) or whole ecosystem respiration (Re)).MethodsThis study took a literature review approach to determine fractional coefficients for estimating Rh from Re or Rs and considered whether these fractions differed across a year in seasonal forests, where relative contributions of root respiration might be expected to vary between growing and dormant seasons. Compiled timeseries data were grouped by forest type (broadleaf, needleleaf, and mixed), and coefficients for a fraction of each component (Rs or Re) that Rh represented were calculated using two approaches, namely a simple annual mean value over all months and individual monthly means. These coefficients were then used to estimate Rh separately from higher-level fluxes (Re from eddy covariance and Rs from soil chambers), measured concurrently at two UK forest sites, and compared to Rh estimated from the same datasets using previously published generic coefficients as well as to concurrently measured Rh and Re.ResultsBoth approaches resulted in much closer convergence of the two separate estimates of Rh (derived from Re or Rs) than previously published coefficients, particularly for Rh/Re coefficients that had previously been measured under peatland blanket bog rather than forest.Discussion/ConclusionThis result suggests that land cover is an important factor in determining the relative contribution of heterotrophic respiration to higher-level fluxes and that the coefficients used would ideally be derived from studies on similar ecosystems.

Many modified or degraded blanket bogs in the UK have been undergoing restoration by different rewetting strategies. While testate amoebae (TA), well-known as hydrology-sensitive species, have been increasingly applied to assess and monitor peatland restoration success, we still do not know the most appropriate sampling strategy of TA in heather-dominated peatlands. In this study, TA communities were taken from two modified blanket bog sites and one intact border mire across a strong hydrological gradient to explore the optimal sampling strategy. The results showed that: 1) TA communities from Sphagnum moss performed better to indicate the hydrological gradient of peatland habitats than other plant types (i.e., other mosses, heather and sedge litter), among which the dominant and second abundant Sphagnum moss species had similar performance as combined all Sphagnum moss did; 2) there was a clear and marked vertical separation in TA community composition, living status and species-specific niche preference; and 3) TA species richness and density incrementally increased from March to next January although median species richness decreased from September to the following January; by contrast, the average number of encysted TA was much higher in June and January than in March and September, which highlights the capability of TA to form cysts in response to extreme hot/dry and cold weather and this change may also suggest a non-negligible influence on ecosystem processes (e.g., C-cycling). Considering sampling cost and practicality, this study in heather-dominated peatlands recommends sampling the entire segment/length of the dominant Sphagnum moss from relatively flat (lawn) positions (although more studies are needed for microtopographic investigation) during the autumn or early winter as a simple but effective sampling strategy to assess the potential of TA as hydrological bioindicators or when using them to monitor the restoration (rewetting) success.

Peatlands are a vast global carbon store. Both climate change and management have shaped peatlands over millennia, sometimes negatively, sometimes positively. Across the globe, prescribed fire is an important and well-recognised vegetation management tool used to promote biodiversity, increase habitat heterogeneity and mitigate uncontrolled wildfires. However, in the UK, there is an ongoing debate about the efficacy and legitimacy of using prescribed fire as a vegetation management tool. The debate centres around the extent to which prescribed burning is associated with a decline in habitat status and ecological function, especially in relation to carbon storage within heather-dominated blanket bog peatlands. Robust reviews of the evidence base are thus required to disentangle this debate and inform land management policies that ensure the protection and enhancement of blanket bog ecological functioning. Here, we critically review "Carbon storage and sequestration by habitat: a review of the evidence (second edition)" by Gregg et al., 2021. We see the value in synthesising the evidence on this topic but question the methodological approach used by Gregg et al. Another concern is their misrepresentation of evidence relating to prescribed burning impacts on blanket bog ecosystems and carbon budgets. We highlight these issues by focusing on the relevant peatland sections within the review by Gregg et al. and conclude by making a series of recommendations to improve the review's scientific robustness and, thereby, its value to academics, land managers and policymakers.

Globally, major efforts are being made to restore peatlands to maximise their resilience to anthropogenic climate change, which puts continuous pressure on peatland ecosystems and modifies the geography of the environmental envelope that underpins peatland functioning. A probable effect of climate change is reduction in the waterlogged conditions that are key to peatland formation and continued accumulation of carbon (C) in peat. C sequestration in peatlands arises from a delicate imbalance between primary production and decomposition, and microbial processes are potentially pivotal in regulating feedbacks between environmental change and the peatland C cycle. Increased soil temperature, caused by climate warming or disturbance of the natural vegetation cover and drainage, may result in reductions of long-term C storage via changes in microbial community composition and metabolic rates. Moreover, changes in water table depth alter the redox state and hence have broad consequences for microbial functions, including effects on fungal and bacterial communities especially methanogens and methanotrophs. This article is a perspective review of the effects of climate change and ecosystem restoration on peatland microbial communities and the implications for C sequestration and climate regulation. It is authored by peatland scientists, microbial ecologists, land managers and non-governmental organisations who were attendees at a series of three workshops held at The University of Manchester (UK) in 2019–2020. Our review suggests that the increase in methane flux sometimes observed when water tables are restored is predicated on the availability of labile carbon from vegetation and the absence of alternative terminal electron acceptors. Peatland microbial communities respond relatively rapidly to shifts in vegetation induced by climate change and subsequent changes in the quantity and quality of below-ground C substrate inputs. Other consequences of climate change that affect peatland microbial communities and C cycling include alterations in snow cover and permafrost thaw. In the face of rapid climate change, restoration of a resilient microbiome is essential to sustaining the climate regulation functions of peatland systems. Technological developments enabling faster characterisation of microbial communities and functions support progress towards this goal, which will require a strongly interdisciplinary approach.

It is often difficult to compile and synthesise evidence across multiple studies to inform policy and practice because different outcomes have been measured in different ways or datasets and models have not been fully or consistently reported. In the case of peatlands, a critical terrestrial carbon store, this lack of consistency hampers the evidence-based decisions in policy and practice that are needed to support effective restoration and conservation. This study adapted methods pioneered in the medical community to reach consensus over peatland outcomes that could be consistently measured and reported to improve the synthesis of data and reduce research waste. Here we report on a methodological framework for identifying, evaluating and prioritising the outcomes that should be measured. We discuss the subsequent steps to standardise methods for measuring and reporting outcomes in peatland research and monitoring. The framework was used to identify and prioritise sets of key variables (known as core domain sets) for UK blanket and raised bogs, and for tropical peat swamps. Peatland experts took part in a structured elicitation and prioritisation process, comprising two workshops and questionnaires, that focused on climate (32 and 18 unique outcomes for UK and tropical peats, respectively), hydrology (26 UK and 16 tropical outcomes), biodiversity (8 UK and 22 tropical outcomes) and fire-related outcomes (13, for tropical peatlands only). Future research is needed to tackle the challenges of standardising methods for data collection, management, analysis, reporting and re-use, and to extend the approach to other types of peatland. The process reported here is a first step towards creating datasets that can be synthesised to inform evidence-based policy and practice, and contribute towards the conservation, restoration and sustainable management of this globally significant carbon store.

Large parts of the rather cold and wet UK uplands are dominated by peatlands, specifically blanket bogs. During most of the Holocene, those peatlands have locked away carbon for many thousands of years due to water logged conditions leading to low decomposition rates and long-term accumulation of soil organic matter as peat. Importantly, this peat accumulation not just increases carbon but also water storage and provides many other associated and vital ecosystem services to societies across the UK, such as drinking water. However, since around 1850, much of the UK uplands have been under grousemoor management to encourage red grouse populations as part of shooting estates, including controversial drainage, heather burning, and more recently, alternative cutting. Due to the rather weak and often conflicting evidence base around impacts of such management more research is needed to unravel climate and management impacts on ecosystem functions and associated ecosystem services. Much of the controversial evidence base is based on short-term monitoring of only a few years (potentially misinterpreting short-term disturbance effects as long-term impacts), single site studies (not capturing edaphic and climatic variability) and space-for-time studies, often with different treatments located at different sites (and thus limited in their ability or even unable to disentangle confounding variables such as site environmental conditions/history from actual management impacts). We present long-term data from a previously government-funded, and currently multi-funded and to 10 years extended, peatland management project investigating ecosystem functions from plot-to-catchment scales on three grousemoor sites across Northern England. The Peatland-ES-UK project is part of the Ecological Continuity Trust’s long-term monitoring network and is based on a Before-After Control-Impact design approach. Each of three replicated field sites consist of two paired 10 ha catchments under previous burn rotation management and part of current peatland restoration work. After one year of pre-treatment monitoring, catchments were allocated either a continuation of burning or an alternative mowing post-treatment catchment management rotation (the latter containing several 5x5 m sub-treatment monitoring plots including no management). Monitoring includes assessing hydrology, water budgets, carbon cycling, greenhouse gas emissions, peat properties, vegetation composition and key biodiversity. We shall provide new and sometimes surprising and even challenging insights into blanket bog ecosystem functioning in an ecosystem services and habitat status context, highlighting the importance of long-term monitoring, experimental design, spatio-temporal changes and remaining uncertainties. Specifically, we shall present findings about water storage (water tables and stream flow), long-term carbon accumulation rates (peat cores), recent carbon budgets (flux chambers) and net greenhouse gas emissions (including methane). We also present some peatland model predictions around various land use impacts on past, present and future carbon storage potential. Finally, we call for a joint funding commitment across research, policy and land user organisations to ensure the continuation of such joined-up ‘real-world’ experimental and long-term monitoring work, as part of a national applied research platform network, as it provides the “gold standard” to inform evidence-based policy directly related to practitioner needs.

Peatlands are globally valued for the ecosystem services they deliver, including water quality regulation and carbon sequestration. In the UK, blanket bogs are the main peatland habitat and previous work has linked blanket bog management, especially rotational burning of heather vegetation on grousemoors, to impacts on these ecosystem services. However, we still lack a mechanistic, process-level understanding of how peatland management and habitat status is linked to ecosystem service provision, which is mostly driven by soil microbial processes.Here we examine bacterial and fungal communities across a spectrum of “intact” to degraded UK blanket bogs and under different vegetation management strategies. Sites included grousemoors under burnt and alternative mown or uncut management along with further locations including 'near intact', degraded and restored sites across a UK climatic gradient ranging from Exmoor (South UK), the Peak District (Mid) to the Flow Country (North). Moreover, an experiment was setup at the University of York with peat mesocosms taken from all sites and management/habitat conditions to allow a comparison between field and controlled conditions and assessing root-mediated processes. Using a structural equation model, we linked grousemoor management to specific fungal/bacterial functional groups, and have started to relate this to changes in water quality provision and carbon cycle aspects. This represents a significant step in the effort to use microbial communities as indicators of peatland habitat condition in UK upland blanket bogs.

A lay summary of our discussion paper: A critical review of the IUCN UK Peatland Programme’s “Burning and Peatlands” position statement (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13157-021-01400-1). In short, we discuss the prescribed burning on blanket bog evidence base and its interpretation within a UK context - specifically in relation to the International Union for Conservation of Nature UK Peatland Programme "Burning and Peatlands” position statement published in 2020, and with reference to management alternatives (cutting and a cessation of management).

Despite substantial contrary evidence, there has been a growing tendency to present prescribed vegetation burning as a management practice that is always damaging to peatland ecosystems in the UK. This is exemplified by the “Burning and Peatlands” position statement published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature UK Peatland Programme. Indeed, while we strongly agree with several of the statements made within this position statement, it also contains a series of unverified assertions and misleading arguments that seemingly serve to simplify the narrative and paint prescribed burning as a wholly damaging peatland management tool. Given that this position statement is published by one of the UK’s most prominent peatland conservation organisations, it is likely to be consulted when debating upland land use policy. Therefore, for the benefit of policymakers, we provide a point-by-point critical review of the “Burning and Peatlands” position statement. We also discuss several further points for researchers and policymakers to consider that are consistently ignored by those attempting to simplify the narrative about prescribed burning. Our aim in producing this discussion paper is to encourage the research and policy community to move towards an evidence-based position about prescribed burning impacts on UK peatlands.

t is with great interest that we read the recent paper by Young et al. entitled “Misinterpreting carbon accumulation rates in records from near-surface peat”. However, we have some concerns about: (i) the use of an unvalidated deep drainage model to criticise studies investigating the impact of heather burning; (ii) the model scenarios and underlying model assumptions used; and (iii) misleading claims made about net C budgets and deep C losses. We feel that these issues require clarification and, in some cases, correction, especially as Young et al. has been used by a leading peatland policy and conservation body (IUCN UK Peatland Programme) to incorrectly characterise two recent studies by Heinemeyer et al. and Marrs et al. as having “presented misleading conclusions”. We strongly believe that one of the main ways to increase our scientific understanding is through vigorous and factual debate. Whilst we are open to and welcome criticism, such criticism needs to be accurate, balanced and evidence-based. Criticism must avoid unfounded or speculative accusations, especially when based on unrelated and unvalidated model scenarios. Indeed, study aims, hypotheses and discussion sections all need to be considered to ensure any criticism is applicable. We accept that deep C losses can be caused by peatland drainage and that this can lead to the misinterpretation of peat surface C accumulation rates or peatland C budgets. But these issues do not apply to the Heinemeyer et al. study, which investigated two specific and clearly stated burn-related hypotheses (charcoal impacts on peat properties and thus peat C accumulation), which only required comparisons of C accumulation rates within recent peat layers. Moreover, using peat core data collected by Heinemeyer et al., we provide strong evidence that the accusations of deep C losses by Young et al. are unfounded. However, the peat core data from Heinemeyer et al. does highlight the value of the Young et al. model scenarios for predicting short-term C loss caused by recent drainage. Finally, we also highlight the value of a detailed peat layer organic C content (%Corg) assessments to detect potential management (i.e. drainage) induced deep peat C loss.

In the UK, peatlands are a significant provider of many ecosystem services including drinking water provision and carbon sequestration. However, a history of intense management and other environmental factors such as air pollution has led to large scale peatland degradation. In fact, a large proportion of UK peatland habitat, particularly upland blanket bog, is no longer being classified as ‘active’. Such degraded peatlands are characterised by lower water tables, causing increased peat decomposition and thus loss of carbon. Carbon is mainly lost via respiration (CO2 and CH4) and as dissolved organic carbon (DOC), the latter leading to a potential associated decline in water quality (affecting colour and taste); however, separating climatic from vegetation impacts and attributing negative impacts to management remains a challenge. A particular issue in the UK is water quality from uplands containing blanket bog, as they provide most of the UK’s drinking water. Over recent decades drinking water quality has deteriorated as seen in increasing DOC concentrations. Whilst previous work has explored links between rising DOC and management practices, particularly grousemoor management involving rotational burning of vegetation to encourage red grouse populations on shooting estates, there continues to be a lack of understanding linkages in relation to alternative management/restoration, vegetation composition and, in particular, underpinning peat chemical processes. Understanding such linkages is becoming ever more important as many degraded peatlands are currently being restored by revegetation and rewetting as well as exploring alternative management such as mowing of vegetation. Unravelling the underpinning peat chemistry and plant-soil processes regulating carbon cycling, and producing and/or altering DOC and its various constituent components, is key to understand impacts upon water treatment requirements. Of particular concern is that chemical (coagulant) water treatment has potential health implications via disinfectant by-product formation following chlorination of DOC rich water supply. Thus, ill-informed land management and/or restoration alongside climatic change may incur additional water treatment pressures and costs, putting increased pressure on an already strained system. Therefore, it is important to understand the role of catchment-scale peat plant-soil chemical processes and adapt best-practice land management options for supporting drinking water quality at the peatland source. Here, insights into peat physical and chemical properties are presented, towards enabling management decisions based on ‘treatment at source’ rather than the conventional ‘end of pipe’ drinking water treatment. Field samples and monitoring of peat mesocosm cores taken from across a spectrum of ‘intact’ to degraded and restored UK blanket bogs (including conventionally burnt and alternatively mown grousemoors) are routinely monitored for gaseous carbon fluxes, DOC and water quality parameters relating DOC properties (e.g. UV-spectra) to vegetation, habitat condition and management. Mesocosms also included sampling from individual vegetated cores, each with two attached plant-free cores, either with or without roots. We compare findings from controlled mesocosms to samples from field sites, assess potential methodological aspects affecting DOC collection and characterisation, unravel potential links to specific vegetation types and management/habitat condition, and explore the characterisation of DOC compounds linked to colour, high coagulant demand and the formation of disinfectant by-products.

Peatlands are wetland ecosystems with great significance as natural habitats and as major global carbon stores. They have been subject to widespread exploitation and degradation with resulting losses in characteristic biota and ecosystem functions such as climate regulation. More recently, large-scale programmes have been established to restore peatland ecosystems and the various services they provide to society. Despite significant progress in peatland science and restoration practice, we lack a process-based understanding of how soil microbiota influence peatland functioning and mediate the resilience and recovery of ecosystem services, to perturbations associated with land use and climate change. We argue that there is a need to: in the short-term, characterise peatland microbial communities across a range of spatial and temporal scales and develop an improved understanding of the links between peatland habitat, ecological functions and microbial processes; in the medium term, define what a successfully restored 'target' peatland microbiome looks like for key carbon cycle related ecosystem services and develop microbial-based monitoring tools for assessing restoration needs; and in the longer term, to use this knowledge to influence restoration practices and assess progress on the trajectory towards 'intact' peatland status. Rapid advances in genetic characterisation of the structure and functions of microbial communities offer the potential for transformative progress in these areas, but the scale and speed of methodological and conceptual advances in studying ecosystem functions is a challenge for peatland scientists. Advances in this area require multidisciplinary collaborations between peatland scientists, data scientists and microbiologists and ultimately, collaboration with the modelling community. Developing a process-based understanding of the resilience and recovery of peatlands to perturbations, such as climate extremes, fires, and drainage, will be key to meeting climate targets and delivering ecosystem services cost effectively.

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-021-00991-1.