It’s taken me too long to publish news of this fascinating new paper from David Sear, Ben Pears and Immy Speck, the chalk team at Southampton University, also sponsored by Natural England.

CARBON STORAGE IN RIVER AND FLOODPLAIN SYSTEMS highlights the potential for C-storage in floodplain and river environments, and reviews the effectiveness of restoration actions in increasing carbon storage relative to current degraded states.

Fascinating factoids abound, but one is that almost 20% of English peat is stored in the top 15% of chalk stream floodplains. Another, that the carbon in this peat is very old (11,000 years) and that chalk stream floodplains are amongst the stable repositories because they are wet and they don’t move around much.

This paper should be a valuable tool for those making river restoration proposals and bids, especially if we think about hydrological connectivity and the restoration of the contiguous mosaic of wet habitats including spring flushes, calcareous fen and wet woodland, which support the chalk stream.

Well done and thank you to David and co.