Pete studies peat! Dr. Whittington is a peatland restoration hydrologist. He studies water fluxes in peatlands, and how it might help mitigate peatland disturbances
Research Keywords
- Peatlands
- Hydrology
- Restoration
- Soil Physics
- Wetlands
Research Summary
I’m interested in the fluxes and flows of water in Sphagnum moss and Sphagnum peatlands. Peatlands store a lot of carbon and play an important role in the global carbon cycle; hydrology is the largest control on how peatlands store carbon.
Therefore, understanding how water moves in a peatland is very important to understanding how the peatland functions, and how it may function in the future under various land use changes (e.g., drainage) or climatic change. Hydrology is also the main controlling factor when it comes to restoring peatlands after a disturbance, and a lot of my research has focused on restoring peatlands after horticultural peatland extraction (the peat moss you buy for your gardens)
Courses Taught
- 38:375 Hydrology
- 38:457 and 657 Wetlands
- 38:265 Applied Quantitative Methods in Geography
- 38:292 Geography of Water Resources
- 48:662 Graduate Research Methods
Teaching Summary
What enjoy the most about teaching is when students get that ‘ah ha’ moment and the course content finally clicks. I try to teach principles, not procedures, or, put another way, I teach students how to think, not what to think. Sometimes students find this frustrating, as they just want to know what they need to know. However, when students are presented with a difficult question, and they’ve learned how to think through the problem, and get to the answer, it’s a great feeling as an educator.
Service Activities
- The MELS committee is invaluable to me as my graduate students are invaluable to my research program. Training of HQP (highly qualified personnel) is critical to tri-agency success, and thus helping steer the MELS program to be graduate student focused, allowing the MELS students to have the best possible experience, is the main reason I’m involved.
- Mental Health First Aid. For the first 6 years at BU I was a Mental Health First Aid Instructor, which I found very rewarding as it allowed me to help the BU community understand and overcome the stigmas associated with mental health. While, sadly, I let my certification lapse during Covid, I nevertheless still use the knowledge gained in the instructor course, in my day-to-day interactions with students.