February field work trip to Wales

On the 22nd February 2020 we braved the wind and the rain of storm Dennis and returned to our two field sites in Wales to reclaim the teabags we had planted 90 days earlier. Our first day of field work was spent on the blanket bog in Migneint, where we had planted teabags in areas that had been damaged due to drainage ditches and in areas that had been restored due to the drainage ditches being filled in. After 8 hours of work in mainly sunny conditions we were able to reclaim 122 of 132 teabags.

The next day we headed two hours south by car to the site at Cors Caron, a raised bog which is currently in a degraded state but will be restored over the next two years. The weather was rainy but this did not dampen our spirits, and we were able to reclaim all 66 teabags we had planted there.

Overall 188 of 198 teabags were taken back to Edinburgh to be analysed!

The teabags are now being processed in the lab, where they will be weighed and their contents analysed using NMR, FT ICR MS and other high resolution analytical techniques.

Below are some photos of us in action taken on the site at Mingeint, a beautiful and very remote peatland in the Snowdonia national park.