Loughborough University is a top-ten rated university in England for research intensity (REF2014) and an outstanding 66% of the work of Loughborough’s academic staff who were eligible to be submitted to the REF was judged as ‘world-leading’ or ‘internationally excellent’, compared to a national average figure of 43%. In choosing Loughborough for your research, you’ll work alongside academics who are leaders in their field. You will benefit from comprehensive support and guidance from our Doctoral College, including tailored careers advice, to help you succeed in your research and future career. Northern peatlands play a crucial role in terrestrial carbon storage and sequestration. They cover only 3% of the Earth’s land surface, but contain around 33% of total soil carbon. Ecosystem processes such as carbon cycling are dependent on plant community composition and function. Within peatlands, plant community composition and structure vary substantially especially at a micro-topographic scale, with associated small-scale variability in hydrological conditions (dryer hummocks, wet hollows and standing water in pools), and vegetation composition. Understanding the spatial pattern of this variation is important to link between small-scale processes and the operation of those processes at bog, regional and global scales. Mapping vegetation and other features across bogs is, however, very challenging due to the difficult nature of the terrain. This project will use small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS, drones) to map vegetation and other features on peatlands. Small unmanned aircraft systems and SfM-MVS (Structure-from-Motion with Multi-View Stereo) are a transformative technology in ecology. They provide the unique ability to obtain extremely high-resolution aerial imagery at spatial scales of c. 1 km2, on-demand and at low cost. Loughborough University is well placed to be at the forefront of this by capitalising on our expertise in terrestrial ecology—particularly bog ecology—and geospatial technologies and sUAS. There is a large amount of scope for the student to determine the direction of the study within this project.