Peat Core Properties After 2019 Flow Country Wildfire

2020 data contains peat properties including moisture, bulk density, ash, and organic matter content from short cores collected 10 months post-fire. Samples were taken from high, medium, and low severity burn areas within drained and near-natural zones of a wildfire impacting over 6500 hectares of blanket bog and wet heath in Northern Scotland's Flow Country.

Use Cases

• Analyze moisture and organic matter content across high, medium, and low severity burn areas to assess wildfire impact on peatland hydrology.
• Model relationships between bulk density and ash content in drained versus near-natural areas to understand post-fire soil compaction.
• Compare peat properties from short cores collected 10 months post-fire to establish baseline recovery metrics for blanket bog ecosystems.

Strengths

• Data captures a severe wildfire event impacting over 6500 hectares of peatland.
• Samples were systematically collected from distinct fire severity levels (high, medium, low) and management zones (drained, near-natural).
• Core collection occurred at a specific post-fire interval (10 months), providing a temporal snapshot of early recovery.

Limitations

• Sample size and spatial replication are unknown, limiting statistical generalizability.
• Data is from a single post-fire time point (10 months), lacking pre-fire or longitudinal measurements for change analysis.
• Geographic scope is restricted to one wildfire event in the Flow Country, Scotland.

Provenance

Source

Environmental Information Data Centre

Collection Method

Peat cores (50 cm) collected from field sites within the wildfire footprint.

Time Range

2020 (collected 10 months after the 2019 wildfire).

Freshness

Dataset metadata was last updated in March 2026.

Geography

Flow Country, Northern Scotland.