Falkland Islands Peatland Greenhouse Gas Project

The Falkland Islands hold one of the world's largest stores of peatland carbon, but historically lacked direct measurement of how much greenhouse gas is absorbed or released by their tussac and white-grass peat soils. Starting in early 2023, the UK Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) funded a three-year Peatland Greenhouse Gas project (2023-2026), delivered by the South Atlantic Environmental Research Institute (SAERI) together with the Falkland Islands Government, the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UK CEH), the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and RSK Group.

The project aims to feed measured greenhouse-gas data into the Falklands' national GHG inventory and to develop a Falklands-specific peatland carbon code that could eventually support carbon-offset financing and diversified rural income for farmers.

By early 2024 the project had installed four eddy-covariance flux towers (two on East Falkland, two on outlying islands) recording CO2, CH4 and N2O exchange 20 times per second, alongside monthly manual chamber measurements at more than 20 sites, and BAS-led peat coring for bulk density, carbon content and radiocarbon dating.

As of the most recent public reporting the project remains in the measurement and baseline-building phase: no peatland carbon stock, sequestration rate, or offset-revenue figures have yet been published, and the carbon code itself is still under development rather than in force. It is documented here as a transparent example of the monitoring groundwork a credible peatland carbon standard requires, not yet as a proven crediting mechanism.