Original article

Landslides (2006) 3:205216 DOI 10.1007/s10346-006-0038-z Received: 23 May 2005 Accepted: 13 March 2006 Published online: 3 June 2006 Springer-Verlag 2006

J. Yang . A. P. Dykes

The liquid limit of peat and its application to the understanding of Irish blanket bog failures

Abstract Catastrophic failures of blanket bogs, involving the escape and outflow of large volumes of semi-liquid basal peat, are well-known phenomena in Ireland but have only very rarely been reported from elsewhere in the world. Their precise causes and mechanisms are as yet unclear. The liquid limit (wL) was identified as a potentially useful indicator of the susceptibility of peat to such failure because peat has extremely high natural water contents and, as an index property, wL takes no account of the properties or structures of highly heterogeneous intact peat. However, the usual procedure for determining the wL of peat is not fully standardised. Prepared samples will normally include potentially highly reactive particles of disrupted fibres and wood fragments that would not be present in such freshly disintegrated form in the field. This paper presents results from wL determinations of peat obtained from the scar margins of three bog failures in northwest Ireland, using four different test procedures including a method involving wet-sieving of the peat to separate the humified <425-m fraction for testing without incorporating artificially fragmented particles of fibres. The sampled peat was classified as H8H10 according to the von Post humification scale. The fibre contents varied between the sites, but the ash contents were <3% in all but one test sample, and bulk densities (dry and field-wet) of the peat from all three sites were almost identical. wL results from the wet-sieving method were 708785%, compared with 633980% from the standard method. The highest measured field water contents exceeded the wet-sieved wL for all three of the field sites. Tests of cone penetration into intact peat cores demonstrated the influence of the reinforcing effect of in situ fibres. The results strongly suggest the need to adopt a fully standardised procedure for determining the wL of peat. Additional shear vane measurements of intact and remoulded peat from a bog failure in Northern Ireland indicated a very high strength sensitivity. This leads to the suggestion that a slight disturbance of basal peat can lead to a loss of strength that rapidly propagates as local stresses change and cause further remoulding as water contents exceed wL. Keywords Bogflows . Blanket peat . Mass movements . Liquid limit Introduction Reports of bogflows and bog bursts indicate a widespread occurrence in Ireland (e.g. Sollas et al. 1897; Delap et al. 1932; Mitchell 1935; Colhoun et al. 1965; Alexander et al. 1986; Wilson et al. 1996) with few examples known from elsewhere in the world. However, detailed understanding of the phenomenon is still lacking. Failures of raised bogs, usually referred to as bog bursts, are rare events and unlikely to recur, but bogflowsfailures of blanket bog in which semi-liquid basal peat appears to have escaped from beneath the less humified surface peathave

continued to occur in Ireland up to the present time (Dykes and Kirk 2006). With over 16% of the combined land area of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland covered with peat (Fig. 1), these failures have the potential to be very damaging to property and infrastructure. Furthermore, the environmental/ecological value of blanket bog was recognised internationally during the 1980s, and the British Isles (including Ireland) contain around 10% of the global blanket peat deposits (Tallis 1997). Any disturbance of the remaining peat must be carefully planned so as to minimise the possibility of a failure occurring and, thus, damaging blanket bog and associated watercourses (McCahon et al. 1987; Wilson et al. 1996). This, and any assessment of the potential hazard from peat failures, poses a significant challenge to engineers and geologists/geomorphologists, respectively. The development of different types of peat deposits is explained as background information for ground engineers by Hobbs (1986) and Bell (2000); the following is based on relevant parts of those accounts. As is the case elsewhere in the world, most Irish bogs originated in poorly drained hollows or lowlands subjected to continuous inundation by runoff water and sediments. The minerotrophic waterlogged conditions caused dead plant material to accumulate to form fen peat, the plant species being influenced by the nutrient-rich runoff waters. Permanent waterlogging reduces the oxygen supply so that only anaerobic organisms with relatively slow metabolic activity are available to break down the cellular structure of the plant remains. Therefore, partially decomposed plant remains accumulate to form the peat. Further accumulation involved different botanical assemblages as nutrient-poor rainwater provided an increasing proportion of the water inputs, giving rise to mesotrophic (intermediate nutrient status) conditions and transitional peat characteristics; the local water table rose within the peat deposit to remain always at or near the surface. Raised bog developed as accumulation continued more rapidly in the centre, with the oligotrophic (nutrient poor) rainwater input dominating the hydrology and resulting in slower decomposition. The very low permeability caused the water table to rise, thus maintaining a self-perpetuating positive feedback (Fig. 2). The latter ombrotrophic (rainwater-fed) stage of raised bog development is also the mechanism of blanket bog development. Small, shallow, waterlogged depressions with impermeable substrates enabled bog peat to accumulate locally and spread laterally to join with other local sources to produce a continuous blanket. Blanket bogs can also extend upslope, by locally damming rainwater at the upper margin, and downslope, as water draining from the lower margins maintains waterlogging. The depth of the blanket bog is related to the local topography (e.g. Fig. 2), being thicker at the sites of the original depressions and very thin if present on slopes exceeding around 2025. The

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1986; Dykes and Kirk 2006). Extrinsic causes of the occurrence of failure (i.e. given a rainfall trigger) include human disturbance of the original peat mass by peat cutting/extraction (Alexander et al. 1985), pre-forestry ploughing (Hendrick 1990), and cutting boundary or drainage ditches (Tomlinson 1981). These may be the most important factors in terms of future instability hazard assessment. A two-phase system is often recognised in peat deposits: the acrotelm is the upper surface layer of the bog, 0.10.6 m thick (Hobbs 1986), defined by the range of fluctuation of the water table (Ingram 1978); and the catotelm is the lower, permanently saturated and often largely amorphous part of the peat profile. Strong but largely circumstantial field evidence obtained shortly after bogflows indicates failure involving fluidisation of the catotelm in situ beneath the acrotelm, the latter often remaining within the source area (e.g. Mitchell 1935; Wilson et al. 1996; Kirk 2001). Furthermore, although understanding of the engineering properties and behaviour of peat is reasonably well-developed in some respects (Carlsten 1993), in others it is not. In part, this is because few data have been obtained and published. For example, the relationships between index properties of peat discussed by Hobbs (1986) and Bell (2000) are dominated by data from British fen peats, with a few results from bog peats of low humification and/or water content and some results from peats elsewhere in the world (predominantly Canada). In the context of this paper, there are no known published data from pure (i.e. very low ash content), highly humified, amorphous bog peats with high natural water contents. More importantly, the influence of fundamental factors such as the botanical composition and environmental history of the development of the peat deposit on the engineering properties are largely unknown. The use of index properties may therefore provide a means of understanding and assessing peat instability before the establishment (or not) of any relationships between the engineering and eco-historical factors. The wide range of very high water contents of peat, which dominantly comprises colloidal organic remains, combined with the known propensity of peat to apparently fluidise, led to consideration of the liquid limit (wL) as a potentially useful indicator of the susceptibility of peat to failure. Its usefulness as an index property of mineral soils relies on a standard procedure being used to measure it, but the wL of peat has rarely been determined, and a fully standardised method has never been used (Hobbs 1986). The difficulties of reliably determining some engineering properties of peat are well-known (Hobbs 1986). These particularly relate to the nature of the organic particles and the associated water-holding capacities, the fibrous nature of some peats and the different ways in which the fibres affect the bulk properties of the peat mass, the structural heterogeneity of peat

Fig. 1 Distribution of peatlands in Ireland (after Hammond 1979). The rectangle indicates the 70-km wide area shown in Fig. 3

limiting conditions for blanket bog development in the British Isles (and Ireland) are climatic, generally requiring at least 1,250 mm of annual rainfall on at least 225 days/year, with cool summers and high humidity (Hammond 1979) so that rainfall always exceeds evapotranspiration. Most of the reported bogflows appear to have been triggered by heavy or prolonged rainfall, but the exact mechanisms of failure are not yet known. This makes it difficult to assess the possibility of more frequent bogflows, resulting primarily from the increasing frequency of high-magnitude and high-intensity rainfall events predicted for parts of the British Isles by current climate change scenarios (Ekstrm et al. 2005). However, the properties of the peat are thought primarily to account for its instability, the key properties perhaps being the degree of humification (the process of decay or decomposition of the plant remains by means of biochemical oxidation in anaerobic waterlogged conditions; Hobbs 1986), shearing and tensile strength, water content and permeability, and the bulk physical properties and structure of the peat mass. All of these properties are strongly determined by the botanical composition of the constituent material (Hobbs
Fig. 2 Diagrammatic representation of raised bog and blanket bog (after Hobbs 1986)

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deposits, andin terms of testing proceduresthe changes in the properties and behaviour of peat that would result from drying and associated oxidation. The British Standard for classifying mineral soils (BSI 1998a) provides an acceptable procedure for determining the wL of organic soils (including peats) (Skempton and Petley 1970) but does not constitute a standardised procedure. Removal of large fibres and fragments is unlikely to be consistent between different workers, and there is no stated method that prescribes how a homogeneous paste can be obtained from the remaining peat (for example, domestic food blenders have been used in some instances; Hobbs 1986). The chemistry of peat water has been shown previously to affect the value of the wL (Hanrahan et al. 1967), although it is difficult to judge the nature and magnitude of this influence from so little published data. A fully replicable, standardised method, which provides a theoretical basis for the wL as an index property that corresponds with that for mineral soils whilst taking into account the factors highlighted above, should be available. This will necessarily include the assumption that the plasticity/liquidity behaviour of peat depends only on the interaction between water and the <425-m size fraction of the constituent particles, as is the case for mineral soils. This assumption is reasonable because any fibres or woody fragments that remain within peat do so because of their resistance to decomposition, therefore retaining their original plant structures and not yet contributing to the fine colloidal matter that is associated with plasticitywater content relationships. Furthermore, eliminating the fibrous material completely from the wL determination would leave the test material only one step removed from the original peat as sampled, rather than two steps when artificially disrupted fragments of fibres are also included (Hobbs 1986). In this paper, we present values for the wL of peat from three sites in Ireland where small failures of blanket bogs occurred in recent years. These values were obtained using five different test procedures. The aims are (1) to provide the first systematic comparison of how the procedures affect the wL values for peat, and to suggest an improvement to the existing standard procedure
Fig. 3 Locations of the bog failures discussed in this paper (black crosses with red labels), mountain summits (black triangles with brown labels), land above 300 m altitude (grey shading), major lakes (Loughs), coastal waters (blue outlines and hatching) and the international border (yellow line)

based on these results and the principles behind their determination; and (2) to use the results to assess the likelihood that in situ fluidisation of the peat may have been the main failure mechanism at all three study sites, notwithstanding the previous observation that natural field water contents of bog peats tend to exceed the wL of those peats (Hobbs 1986). Study sites Three relatively recent blanket bog failures in northwest Ireland (Figs. 3 and 4) were chosen to provide material for laboratory testing. All were surveyed and sampled during the period 1214 April 2004. The first, subsequently referred to as Geevagh, involved around 20,000 m3 of peat (Figs. 4a and 5) and occurred within a few months before May 1991, on the southern side of the plateau-ridge top of Carrane Hill in Straduff Townland near Geevagh, County Sligo (547.3N, 813.0W). It is located at an altitude of 400 m, around 500 m northwest of the large bogflow of 1984 (Alexander et al. 1986). Between these two is the smaller scar of a much older bogflow, and others have occurred on the same ridge since 1831 (Alexander et al. 1986). Like the 1984 bogflow, this one appears to have resulted from initial failure of the deep (up to ca. 3 m) bank of peat that acted as a natural dam along the edge of a distinct escarpment, holding back the bog on the plateau. Morphological evidence is consistent with previously published accounts of bogflows: the initial breach released a flow of (semi-) liquid catotelm peat from the bog behind. This outflow dragged the fibrous acrotelm with it, the latter breaking up into blocks and strips that were carried from the central part of the source area or that subsided into the source area around the margins, as retrogressive development of catotelm flow reduced and then stopped. The flow of catotelm peat with acrotelm blocks left a trail of peat slurry and debris up to 5060 m wide down the face of the escarpment for around 250 m then through a planted conifer forest for 100 m before crossing a minor road. Despite felling some small trees on entry to the forest and leaving blocks of peat up to 1 m wide resting against the upslope side of some larger trees, the flow still exerted sufficient force to destroy the fences on either side of

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Fig. 4 Outline plans of the bog failures, at the same scale and orientation, based on field GPS surveys. a Geevagh, showing gradients of the failed slope, concentric tears in the peat around the head, tension cracks along the eastern margin, and expanding flow track beyond the source area off the edge of the escarpment. b Stony River, showing the same features as Geevagh with selected peat blocks but no tension cracks. c East Cuilcagh, indicating the large zone of accumulated displaced peat, thrust beneath intact peat around the toe margin. In all cases, X marks the sampling site

the road below the forest. The extent of the flow beyond this point could not be determined as visible evidence had been lost during the 78 years since the event. Examination of an accessible profile of the in situ peat at the margin (Fig. 6) revealed a fibrous woody layer at 0.991.19 m depth (von Post: H56) that may have controlled the development of the failure to some extent. The remainder of the profile (except 0.52 0.72 m that was H8), including the upper 0.30 m, was H9 or H10. The present depth of the profile away from the escarpment edge is around 1.50 m, though post-failure shrinkage of the exposed peat face may account for at least half a metre of depth reduction. The present layer between 1.19 and 1.44 m depth was found to be particularly weak, containing localised pockets of muddy water with small lumps of peat and grey bands of liquid slurry with water contents >1,000%, randomly arranged throughout a mostly firm medium (red-)brown coloured peat. These variations can be seen in Fig. 6. Samples were obtained from the lower part of this horizon, which was assumed to be representative of the peat that failed initially. This material was classified in the field as H910 B4 F2 R1 W0, using von Posts (1922) classification as presented by Landva and Pheeney (1980) and Hobbs (1986) (see Table 3). The second bogflow (Stony River), involving around 22,000 m3 of peat, occurred within a few months before November 1998 on a small north-facing plateau at 440 m altitude (Figs. 4b and 7) within the Stony River catchment on the north side of Slieve Anierin, County Leitrim (546.3N, 758.7W). An aerial survey in November 1998 did not reveal any evidence of other peat failures on the Slieve
Fig. 5 Geevagh. View upslope into the twin source areas, April 2004

AnierinBencroy mountains. Morphological evidence indicates a flow-type failure similar to other bogflows but with different patterns of tearing and shearing of the acrotelm round the margins of the source area. Like the Geevagh bogflow, this one appears to have involved a naturally occurring failure of the peat margin at the edge of an escarpment (visible at the right of Fig. 7). However, whilst the western side (the upper side as seen in Fig. 7) and most of the central part of the source area appear to have involved an outflow of (semi-)liquid catotelm that dragged the acrotelm with it, the latter breaking up and largely being transported from the source area, the catotelm is intact in the head zone and along the eastern side. The movement of the acrotelm over flowing catotelm dragged adjacent acrotelm over in situ catotelm, indicating that the tensile strength of the acrotelm was sufficiently high to overcome the shearing resistance provided by its contact with the upper catotelm. A narrow trail of peat slurry and debris led from the escarpment breach down the slope for about 400 m before entering the Stony River. The nature and extent of any downstream impacts are unknown. An exposed peat profile at the margin revealed almost 2 m of peat, suggesting a depth of nearer 2.5 m at the time of failure. The humification increased with depth from H34 at 00.3 m to H9 at 1.11.6 m, the latter horizon containing some dense woody fibres. Below 160 cm, a much higher content of woody fibres within a stiff peat of H8 contained pockets or sheets of grey H10 peat slurry similar to those encountered at Geevagh. The peat at Stony River was otherwise generally firmer throughout. Samples were obtained

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such evidence from other failures, has indicated that this failure might actually have been a bog slide (Dykes and Kirk 2006), in which the lower catotelm failed by shearing with the semi-liquid peat debris resulting from remoulding of the base of sliding peat blocks (Bishopp and Mitchell 1946). This failure involved movement of peat from a steeper slope (6, cf. 4 at Stony River and 25 at Geevagh) into a small, peat-filled tributary valley. Much of the peat blanket appears to have slid intact (Fig. 8), although the degree of disruption of the catotelm beneath this zone cannot be determined. The extensive toe lobe is defined by thrust features around its margin; unusually, there was no loss of peat from this failure site. An accessible peat profile at the margin revealed highly humified peat throughout, increasing from H7 at 00.18 m to H10 at 1.041.15 m depth. When first examined in early 1998, the peat was up to 1.6 m deep around the margins (Fig. 9) and 2.1 m deep a few metres upslope from the failure scar (Kirk 2001), indicating rapid post-failure shrinkage of the exposed peat due to drying and oxidation. Samples were obtained from the lowest 0.2 m of the profile, described in the field as H10 B3 F2 R1 W0, where again the grey slurry was also encountered. Materials and methods At each field site, the peat profile selected for inspection and sampling was determined by the availability of an intact part of the source area margin unimpeded by peat debris in front and unaffected by tension cracks or other visible disturbance to the in situ peat behind. The part of each peat profile, from which samples were obtained, is identified in the previous section. All humification values were determined in the field (and laboratory) using the von Post test, in which peat is squeezed in the hand and the result of this is matched to the nearest descriptive category (Table 1). This is the accepted method in peat engineering (Hobbs 1986; Carlsten 1993; Bell 2000) in the absence of a quantitative alternative. From all three field sites, eight small intact core samples 50 mm long 50 mm diameter were obtained, without disturbing the original peat structure, for determination of the basic physical characteristics of the peat at each site (water content, ash content, bulk density and saturated hydraulic conductivity). Additional blocks of peat were cut from the field peat profiles for carrying out wL analyses using other methods described in this paper. Water contents of samples were determined by oven-drying for 24 h at 105C, and ash contents (loss on ignition) were measured after ignition at 550C for 3 h (Skempton and Petley 1970; Hobbs 1986). A constant head method was used to measure the saturated hydraulic conductivity.

Fig. 6 Geevagh. The peat profile described in the text, April 2004 (trowel for scale)

from 1.7 to 1.9 m depth where the peat was recorded as H8 B3 F2 R2 W3. The very thin smear of peat slurry covering the mineral substrate over the lower part of the source area indicated that failure occurred within, or at least involved, this lower layer. The third, smaller failure (East Cuilcagh, ca. 10,500 m3) occurred probably during 1997 (estimated) on the eastern midslopes plateau of Cuilcagh Mountain (Figs. 4c and 8), County Cavan, at an altitude of 360 m (5411.8N, 746.4W). It was adjacent to (and overlapping with) an earlier failure (within a few years before 1989) and 1.2 km south of a larger and potentially damaging bog slide that occurred in August 1992 (Walker and Gunn 1993). The northern and eastern slopes of Cuilcagh Mountain display the scars of over 40 other peat failures of various types (Kirk 2001; Dykes and Kirk 2006). Although originally identified as a bogflow, a re-appraisal of its morphological characteristics, in the light of
Fig. 7 Stony River. View from a light aircraft, November 1998

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Fig. 8 East Cuilcagh. General view from beyond the toe margin, May 2000

The standard drop-cone penetrometer method was used to determine the wL of the samples of peat from each site. This method is described in detail in the Appendix. It has superceded the use of the Casagrande apparatus as the preferred standard method because it is easier to perform; it provides more reproducible and, therefore, reliable results; and it requires less subjective judgement from the investigator (BSI 1998a). In using this method to determine the wL of peat, it was expected that the results obtained would be influenced by the procedure used to prepare the sample material for testing. It is the nature and implications of the preparation-dependent variability of wL values that are of concern here. Five different preparations were applied to peat samples from each bogflow, described below and summarised for comparison in Table 2, and the corresponding wL values were then obtained using the penetrometer. Many more water contents and corresponding penetrations were obtained than specified by the standard method, to verify the reliability of using 20-mm penetration as the wL determinant given the general difficulties of determining engineering properties of peat and, thus, prior uncertainty of its likely behaviour. Logistical constraints prevented us from replicating any of the 15 wL tests, but we consider the standard penetrometer test procedure, combined with the carefully specified sample preparations, to be sufficiently rigorous to provide a good indication of the true material characteristics. In any case, as the wL is an index property, it should not be greatly influenced by natural variations in the source material from each study site: the effect of one gross variation in a source material property can be clearly identified and explained (see Results). Preparation for mineral soils (SPM) The purpose of using this preparation method was to demonstrate the effect of drying and oxidation on the determination of peat properties and behaviour. Although test samples should not be
Fig. 9 East Cuilcagh. The upper part of the source area in the vicinity of the sampling site, November 1998

allowed to dry before wL determination, the British Standard does allow air-drying if required (BSI 1998a). One block sample of peat (approximately 500 g) from each failure site was allowed to air-dry at room temperature. Some coarse fibres and/or wood fragments were picked out by hand before the peat was dry-sieved using a 425-m mesh (the British Standard specifies wet sieving; see WSD below). The fine fragments that passed through the sieve were then mixed to a paste with de-ionised water for wL determination. Preparation for organic soils (SPO) This is the method of preparation described by Skempton and Petley (1970) and Hobbs (1986), as there are no other known references to methods of wL determination for peat. It is used in this study to provide reference wL values against which to compare the others. Around 500 g of peat from each failure site was mixed thoroughly in a large bowl using a broad-bladed knife to produce the homogeneous paste for wL determination and coarse fibres and/or wood fragments were removed using tweezers (as allowed by the British Standard), with the remainder broken down by the mixing process. Preparation for organic soils by wet-sieving using de-ionised water (WSD) This method was tried as a possible improvement to the SPO method by standardising the nature and origin of the remoulded fines (<425 m) for testing by wet-sieving the original peat. Keeping the peat saturated will reduce the possibility of oxidation effects influencing the results. Around 500 g of peat from each failure site was placed in de-ionised water and stirred to a slurry, then washed through a 425-m sieve using additional de-ionised water (entirely as specified for soil in BSI 1998a). Large quantities of water (e.g. >10 l) were needed to wash sufficient peat particles through the sieve, requiring considerable time and energy to obtain

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Table 1 Humification of peat (after von Post 1922; Landva and Pheeney 1980; Hobbs 1986)

Degree of humification H1 H2 H3 H4 H5 H6 H7 H8 H9 H10

Decomposition Plant structure None Insignificant Very slight Slight Moderate Moderately strong Strong Very strong Nearly complete Complete Easily identified Easily identified Still identifiable Not easily identified Recognisable, but vague Indistinct (more distinct after squeezing) Faintly recognisable Very indistinct Almost unrecognisable Not discernible

Amorphous material None None Slight Some Considerable Considerable High High

Material passing between fingers when squeezed Clear, colourless water Yellowish water Brown, muddy water; no peat Dark brown, muddy water; no peat Muddy water and some peat About one-third of peat squeezed out; water dark brown About half of peat squeezed out; any water very dark brown About two-thirds of peat squeezed out; also some pasty water Nearly all the peat squeezed out as a fairly uniform paste All the peat passes between the fingers; no free water visible

Nature of residue

Not pasty Somewhat pasty Strongly pasty

Fibres and roots more resistant to decomposition

the peat sediment from the resulting suspension by evaporating off most of the water. Further drying of the slurry-like sediment was needed before the wL could be determined. An electric fan heater was used for this; it was positioned far enough from the peat slurry so that direct heat should not damage any of the particles. Preparation for organic soils by wet-sieving using tap water (WST) The purpose of using this method was to verify the observation of Hanrahan et al. (1967) concerning the influence of water chemistry on wL values. Details are the same as for WSD (above), but UK tap water was used throughout instead of de-ionised water. No preparation, undisturbed peat (NPU) Although this method will clearly not provide wL values as such, in it the small intact core samples of peat from each failure site were subjected to the penetrometer test to indicate the influence of fibres and intact peat structures, even in H8H10 peat in which decomposition to an amorphous mass is most advanced, compared with wL values determined using the other methods. Each undisturbed sample was placed inside the standard brass container. A 2-mm gap between the sides of the sample and the inside of the container was not seen to reduce due to sample deformation in response to penetration of the drop-cone. Two measurements of cone penetration were made from each core sample, roughly 20 mm apart on either side of the centre, and the corresponding water content determined from 10 g subsamples from the respective sides of the sample, giving 16 data points for each location. Standardised replication of each penetration, as normally

required for each different water content (Appendix), was not appropriate for this method. Two large undisturbed core samples of peat from the Carntogher bog failure (Sperrin Mountains Northern Ireland) of September 1993 (Wilson et al. 1996) were also available to us. These were collected on 12 September 2004 with other samples for a separate study. We used these for a supplementary test of the sensitivity of highly humified lower peat with some fibres, i.e. the degree of loss of strength on remoulding. The 100 mm long 100 mm diameter cores were obtained from 1.251.35 m depth on the southeastern margin of the failure scar where the current maximum peat depth is around 1.4 m. An approximate indication of the undrained strength of the undisturbed peat was obtained in the laboratory using a field shear vane with the vane component (comprising four blades each 32 mm high and 8 mm wide) attached directly to the torque handle. A large core sample was secured upright and the vane was inserted to different depths at each of four random horizontal positions in the sample. The peat was then emptied from its core ring into a mixing bowl and broken up/ stirred to slurry. The shear vane was inserted into this slurry at six random positions to obtain a reasonable estimate of the undrained strength of the remoulded peat. The second core sample was then used to obtain a replicate set of measurements. Results The general physical characteristics of the peat at each sample site are shown in Table 3. The very strong similarity between these peats must be emphasised. The potentially most important variant

Table 2 Summary of the different methods of sample preparation used in this study for liquid limit determination using the drop-cone penetrometer

Method SPM (see text) Starting 500 g of field-wet peat material Step 1 Air-dry at room temperature Step 2 Dry-sieve-pass 425 m mesh Step 3 Mix with de-ionised water to form paste

SPO 500 g of field-wet peat Stir to slurry

WSD 500 g of field-wet peat

WST 500 g of field-wet peat

NPU

Stir to slurry in de-ionised water Remove fibres by hand using Wet-sieve-pass 425 m tweezers mesh Mix to paste (with added Evaporate and collect de-ionised water if necessary) sediment as paste

Intact peat cores 50 mm long 50 mm diameter Stir to slurry in tap water N/a Wet-sieve-pass 425 m mesh Evaporate and collect sediment as paste N/a N/a

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Table 3 Indicative values of the physical properties of the peat from the sample sites

Site

Geevagh Stony River East 0.92 Cuilcagh Carntogher 0.95

Saturated water contenta (vol.) 0.93 0.90

Dry bulk densitya (g cm3 ) 0.13 0.15 0.13 0.12

Saturated bulk densitya (g cm3 ) 1.06 1.05 1.04 1.00

Saturated hydraulic conductivitya,b (m s1 ) <1011 <1011 1106 2107

Degree of humification (von Post) (Table 2) H910 H8 H10 H10

Peat classification (von Post) B 4 F 2 R 1 W0 B 3 F 2 R 2 W3 B 3 F 2 R 1 W0 B 2 F 2 R 1 W0

B water content [1 (dry) to 5 (very high)], F fine fibres <1 mm diameter or width [0 (nil) to 3 (high content)], R coarse fibres >1 mm diameter or width [0 (nil) to 3 (high content)], W wood and/or shrub content [0 (nil) to 3 (high content)] (Landva and Pheeney 1980; Hobbs 1986) a Mean, n=6 b Vertical

is the slightly lower humification with much higher content of wood/shrub remnants at the Stony River bogflow. The much higher hydraulic conductivity of the East Cuilcagh peat reflects the in situ structure of the peat mass rather than the nature of the constituent material, so it is unlikely to have any influence on the wL. Table 4 presents the ash contents of the peat used for the 15 wL determinations. The similarity between all the samples (with one exception) should again be noted, as should the extremely high purity of the peat (only previously represented in the literature by an unidentified Welsh bog in Fig. 17 of Hobbs 1986). The anomalously high ash content of one Stony River block sample arises from the sample having been obtained from very close to a highly irregular peatsubstrate interface; the sample clearly included some mineral substrate material. The fact that the peat at all three sites appears to be largely the same leads to the expectation that the wL of the peat might be broadly similar at each site. The penetrometer test results for all the wL determinations are presented in Fig. 10, and the summary plot of the liquid limits obtained is shown in Fig. 11 (with the corresponding data provided in Table 5). The similarity of most of the results between the three sites is readily apparent, particularly with respect to the NPU (yellow in Fig. 10), SPM (red) and WST (blue) methods, and two of the WSD (green) methods. The WSD plot for the Stony River peat is much lower than for the other two sites, but this can be explained by the high content of mineral matter that this sample was found to contain (Table 4). This latter result is consistent with published accounts that highlight a general inverse relationship between wL and ash content (Skempton and Petley 1970; Hobbs 1986). But for this effect, it is reasonable to assume that the Stony River WSD plot should be almost the same as the WST plot, as is the case for the other sites. The least consistent results are those obtained using the SPO method (black in Fig. 10), i.e. the method

used in the few previous determinations of the wL of peat (Skempton and Petley 1970; Hobbs 1986). The difficulty of controlling water content variations of peat to satisfy the specified penetrometer test procedure (Appendix) is clear from the spread of points on each wL determination in Fig. 10. Restricting the measured range of penetration depths to 1525 mm for each test would have produced some unreliable or unusable results. Even with the extended range of penetration depths, the wider scatter of points from the SPO test is apparent for each site. The Stony River peat was generally less consistently amorphous in character (Table 3), and this is reflected in the penetrationwater content relationships for the samples that were not wet-sieved. Indeed, if the 1525 mm penetration range was adhered to, no result would have been obtained from the SPM or SPO methods. The results from the new WST and WSD methods seem to provide a more reliable basis for determining the wL of highly humified blanket peat than the existing standard method. The results for each site are much closer together (except WSD-Stony River, as discussed above), well within the spread of values produced by the SPO method, and the order of values is the same: the peat from Geevagh has the highest wL in each case and that from Stony River has the lowest. These results appear to contradict Hobbss (1986) conclusion that wL varies inversely with humification, although that conclusion was based on results from fen peat. In all cases, the WST and WSD wL results are exceeded by the field water content of some of the peat at the time of sampling, following a short spell of cool dry weather. Hanrahan et al. (1967) found that using tap water instead of distilled water reduced their wL from 720 to 570%, but in our case the tap water produced slightly higher values. The only comments we can make are that Hanrahan et al.s results were obtained from unspecified remoulded peat with H4 humification (cf. H9H10 in our case) and that there are insufficient

Table 4 Mean ash content (%) of the peat samples that provided the results in Table 5 (n8)

Site Geevagh Stony River East Cuilcagh Carntogher

NPU 1.47 1.60 1.87

SPM 1.92 1.47a 2.11

SPO 2.21 1.82 1.82

WSD 1.18 19.47b 2.16

WST 1.47 2.27 2.67c

Sensitivity tests

3.10a

Using the relationship between organic matter content (100-percentage ash content) and specific gravity (Eq. 7 in Hobbs 1986), the ash contents correspond with specific gravity=1.42 a n=6 for these values b Specific gravity is 1.55 c Specific gravity is 1.43

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Fig. 11 Liquid limits for all sample preparation methods and field water contents (16 from each site) for peat samples obtained from the three failure sites: Geevagh (red circles), Stony River (green squares) and East Cuilcagh (blue triangles)

considered indicative of properties at Geevagh and East Cuilcagh, though possibly not Stony River due to the lower humification and higher wood/shrub content. The average strengths of the original peat cores from Carntogher were 6.4 kPa (water content 919%) and 6.0 kPa (973%), although these are likely to be overestimates because of the influence of fibres on the shear vane within the intact peat (Helenelund 1967; Landva 1980; Landva and La Rochelle 1983). All but one of the 12 remoulded strength measurements were less than 1 kPa (0.1 t m2), the other being 2.9 kPa. Allowing for uncertainties, the strength sensitivity of the Carntogher peat can be described as high, i.e. St6. Discussion The use of a wet-sieving method to determine the wL of peat appears to produce more consistent and, therefore, reliable results compared with the existing standard method (SPO), notwithstanding the possible small influence of the test water. It has the added advantage of ensuring a standardised replicable procedure for preparing the fine organic fraction for testing that is directly comparable with the standard procedure for mineral soils. Furthermore, although the SPO method involves removing the largest fibres and reducing the remainder to a fine pulp, this final material will include particles of fragmented fibres and/or woody material, contributing a small component to the test material having powerful adsorption properties (Hobbs 1986) unrepresentative of intact fibres in the original peat, and thus possibly influencing the wL value obtained from each test. The WSD (and WST) method eliminates this possibility. The retention of some fibrous matter using the SPO method may also account for both the greater scatter of points on the plots of cone penetration vs water content and the different slope of the regression line compared with the WSD method (Fig. 11). The potential unreliability of the SPO method is further indicated by the range of wL values overlapping with results from the NPU tests, in which all the variable and unpredictable effects of in situ fibre reinforcement of the peat fabric give rise to much higher wL values. The SPM method is inappropriate for peat despite its efficient standardised procedure, as air-drying causes oxidation and loss of cellular water. These effects are irreversible and give rise to much lower values for wL.

Fig. 10 Cone penetration test results for all sample preparation methods. NPU yellow, SPM red, SPO black, WSD green, WST blue. Best-fit (least-squares) regression lines and corresponding R2 values are shown. The liquid limit water content corresponds with 20 mm penetration of the cone (indicated by the fine, broken, vertical line). a Geevagh, b Stony River, c East Cuilcagh

published studies of the influence of water chemistry on any peat test results to draw any conclusions. The NPU tests results are plotted as wL values in Fig. 11 to enable comparison with the wL results obtained from the other methods. The plots of cone penetration vs water content for the Geevagh and East Cuilcagh peat showed statistically significant (at p=0.1 and p=0.05, respectively) positive relationships (Fig. 10), but with maximum penetrations of just 13.7 and 15.7 mm, respectively. Extrapolation of the regression lines to 20-mm penetration provided the values plotted in Fig. 11. The Stony River results showed an insignificant relationship (Fig. 10), so no meaningful value could be derived for Fig. 11. The general characteristics of the Carntogher peat are also shown in Tables 3, 4 and 5. These are sufficiently similar to the three main sites that results from the shear vane tests can be

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Table 5 Liquid limit test results and field water contents (% dry mass) for peat samples obtained from the three failure sites

Site Geevagh Stony River East Cuilcagh Carntogher

NPU 918 1,023

SPM 288 255 327

SPO 980 633 786

WSD 750 475 719

WST 785 708 767

Field water content (n=16) 620859 594741 655990 621798 (n=6)

Field water contents of the Carntogher peat are included for comparison

The values of wL obtained from the basal catotelm of the Irish blanket bogs (708785%) are at the very lowest extreme for bog peat values as identified by Hobbs (1986), which is consistent with the very highly humified state of the test samples. Furthermore, these values, combined with the ignition losses of >97% for almost all samples, appear to correspond only with the published properties of some Canadian peats (MacFarlane 1969). This is a reflection of the paucity of data available to Hobbs (1986) and, subsequently, Bell (2000) for their comprehensive reviews. Our results indicate that under what were probably fairly typical wetness conditions given recent weather before sampling, several of the field water contents determined from the small intact cores exceed the corresponding wL. The results were obtained from blanket bog that had failed, so attention must be focussed on how and why the high water content was able to mobilise the peat mass into a flow (at Geevagh and Stony River if not East Cuilcagh). Small amounts of additional water produce very large increases in the water content and, therefore, large changes in the physical state of the amorphous (colloidal) peat. Extreme rainfall events have been implicated in some bogflow occurrences (e.g. Tomlinson 1981; Wilson et al. 1996), although others followed wet periods comprising several days of moderate or even low daily rainfalls (Alexander et al. 1986; Hendrick 1990). Therefore, the nature of peat must be considered further, particularly its retention of water within the cells and the cell walls of the plant remains as well as in the interparticle pores (Wilson 1978, cited in Bell 2000). Bell (2000) indicated that if stress is applied to peat, water will initially be forced out of the pore spaces. However, if the saturated hydraulic conductivity is as low as our results indicate (Table 3), then the pore water pressure will instead increase in situ, possibly to the point at which cellular water starts to be expelled into the pore spaces (Bell 2000). With the overall water content already in excess of the wL, rapid softening of the peat and associated deformation and failure may then be expected (Wilson 1978, cited in Bell 2000); the strength sensitivity of the Carntogher peat samples demonstrates this loss of strength due to deformation and remoulding. The susceptibility of Irish upland blanket bogs to large-scale flow failure is thus explained, although the initiation of natural failures in undisturbed bogs needs further research. Our findings also have implications for engineering projects on upland blanket bogs. In the UK and Irish contexts, this relates primarily to the construction of wind farms that may comprise several tens of turbines 100 m or more tall, together with access roads capable of supporting the construction plant and turbine delivery transporters. Unfortunately, the detailed reviews of peat engineering properties by Hobbs (1986) and Bell (2000) reveal the near-absence of relevant data. In particular, they highlight a distinction between highly humified amorphous (granular) peat

and less humified fibrous peat. Most of the peat in Irish bogflow scars comprises very highly humified amorphous material with some or many fibres. This may mean that upland blanket peats might exhibit responses to stresses that do not conform with the expected generalisations of Hobbs and Bell. However, we can accept the idea of pore water pressures within the voids of catotelm peat being raised due to applied stress forcing water out of plant cells, with failure by rapid creep or spreading mechanisms associated with rapid softening being expected if the natural water content exceeded the wL before the stress being applied. Two further considerations apply. Firstly, excessive loads on wind farm access roads would be transient, perhaps a few hours at most in any place, so the critical sites would be those where longterm stress is created, for example where spoil material is dumped onto in situ peat, with or without measures to spread the load over a larger area. Secondly, Bell (2000) observed that even moderate loads can induce serious shearing stresses in peat as settlement occurs in association with creep or lateral spread as the peat deforms towards adjacent unloaded/unconfined peat. If the load is applied over a large area of peat, settlement of the peat beneath the central part of the loaded area will not be accompanied by volume change due to lateral deformations. The increase in pore water pressures could result in rotational shear combined with rapid softening if the water content >wL. This scenario probably gave rise to the Canadian peat flow of 1983 (Hungr and Evans 1985) and a similar failure of valley floor fen-transitional peat in the Peruvian Andes in early 2003 (Dykes and Kirk 2006). Other more recent examples are known from Ireland, including two at the Derrybrien wind farm, Co. Galway, in October 2003. Conclusions As with any other index test of material properties, determination of the liquid limit of peat should be undertaken using a standardised method. Given the distinctive nature of peat, this standard method must take full and exclusive account of the properties of the fine, chemically active, colloidal particles without the test results being influenced by variable, researcher-dependent quantities of fragments of residual fibres or woody material. Wetsieving the peat to obtain these fine particles would appear to provide a more consistentand therefore probably more reliable standard procedure than the existing, accepted method. Further investigations are required to determine the influence of water chemistry on the liquid limit of peat; results obtained using water from the peat at the field site may be different again from those obtained using tap water or distilled/de-ionised water. The highly humified (H8 to H10) but very fibrous lower catotelm peat from three blanket bogs in northwest Ireland had liquid limits at the lower end of the range of values expected for bog peats and

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had field water contents higher than their respective liquid limits. All three bogs had failed, although one of these failures was probably a bog slide rather than a bogflow. Given the high sensitivity of these bog peats and the fact that water content is often expected to exceed the liquid limit in the lower layers of all blanket bogs, it appears that any initial disturbance of such peat can give rise to widespread failure by strength loss on remoulding, as cellular water is expelled into pore spaces by rapidly changing local stress conditions. However, the nature of the initial disturbance in naturally occurring bogflows is yet unknown. In addition to the possible hazard arising from natural bogflows, the occurrence of several failures associated with inappropriate land management (e.g. excavating ditches, extracting peat) or engineering works associated particularly with wind farm construction demonstrates the need for a greatly improved understanding of the geotechnical properties and behaviour of peat systems. Acknowledgements This research was funded by the University of Huddersfield. We thank Edward Bromhead for constructive comments on an earlier draft of this paper and the anonymous reviewer for suggesting further improvements, and Nick Scarle for drawing Figs. 2, 3 and 4. Appendix Determination of the liquid limit using the drop-cone penetrometer method (after BSI 1998a). Details of this method can be found in standard textbooks such as Head (1980) or Vickers (1983). Remoulded soil (or other sample material), with particles >425 m removed, is mixed to a paste with distilled (or de-ionised; BSI 1998b) water, then carefully packed (without trapping air) into a standard metal (usually brass) cup with a flat bottom of 55 mm diameter and vertical sides 40 mm high. The upper surface of the sample is leveled with the top of the cup. The tip of the cone of a drop-cone penetrometer is positioned so that it just touches the surface of the sample at its centre. The standard 35-mm long cone comprises 80 g of polished stainless steel forming a sharp point with an angle of 30. The vertical position of the cone is recorded to the nearest 0.1 mm from the scale fixed to the penetrometer. The cone is then released to fall into the sample for 5 s, locking into its new position after this time. The new vertical position of the cone is recorded to the nearest 0.1 mm and the difference is recorded as the penetration in millimetres. The sample paste is then re-mixed, re-packed into the cup and the test is repeated. If both penetrations differ by 0.5 mm, the average is recorded and the water content (% dry mass) of ca.10 g subsample of the paste is determined by oven-drying to constant mass. If the difference between the two penetrations is >0.5 but 1.0 mm, then a third test is done. If all three penetrations fall within a range of 1.0 mm, the average is recorded and the water content of ca.10 g subsample is determined. If this criterion is not met, the entire test for this water content is void and must be restarted. This procedure is repeated for different moisture contents of the original sample paste, with more distilled (or de-ionised) water being added to the paste each time. A range of penetration values should be obtained with at least two between 15 and 20 mm and

two between 20 and 25 mm, evenly spaced, so that a graph of water content against penetration can be plotted. The liquid limit wL is the water content that corresponds with a penetration of 20 mm on the best-fit straight line on the graph. References
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