Generating multi-proxy Holocene palaeoenvironmental records from blanket peatlands

Ombrotrophic peatlands have provided important archives for understanding Holocene palaeoenvironmental change. However, records are predominantly from raised bogs due to potential issues regarding preservation of proxy indicators, record length and low temporal resolution in other peat types including blanket bogs. By carrying out peat depth and stratigraphy surveys we demonstrate how blanket peatlands can provide archives capable of providing records that are not reliant on single proxies, as has been often the case in the past, and can provide good resolution records. A record containing humification, testate amoebae and plant macrofossils was derived for the last 3000 years with accumulation rates as high as 8 yrs cm− 1 providing favourable temporal resolution, particularly over the last 1500 years. Major changes in proxy indicators reflecting potential changes in water-table depth were often coherent with changes in climate. Human activity also had a major impact on the peatland throughout the record especially in the last 100 years where the influence of wildfire and managed burning, together with an effect of atmospheric pollution, fundamentally changed the state of the peatland.