Restoring peat bogs in Central Europe (ReVersal)

The project ReVersal (Restoring peatlands of the nemoral zone under conditions of varying water supply) aims at identifying appropriate methods for the restoration of peat bogs in Central Europe under conditions of climate change. At present, the restoration of bogs often leaves the sites to natural succession, although this may result in high methane emissions and no medium-term perspective of reestablishing bog hydrology. This is due to a patchy understanding of physicochemical and biological processes controlling the development and restoration of bogs and on the lack of data and models on indicators of ecosystem conditions, such as on the spatio -temporal dynamics and budgets of gas fluxes, biodiversity, or hydrology. Peat degradation alters the water holding capacity and reduces the potential to buffer variations in water availability, constraining rewetting and restoration of ecosystem functioning. Therefore, interdisciplinary approaches are needed to restore and preserve degraded peat bogs in the long term and to re-establish bog vegetation as a key to initiate peat formation and to avoid high methane emissions after rewetting. The ReVersal project aims to develop a spatio-temporally explicit indicator framework for peatland restoration success across peat bog sites affected by drainage and/or extraction. This will be achieved by the synergistic consideration of biological and biogeochemical conditions, greenhouse gas fluxes, and biodiversity along degradation and restoration trajectories under past, current and future climatic and socio -economic conditions. Based on this consideration, uncertainties of conservation and restoration approaches will be evaluated and adaptive management strategies considering trade-offs between restoration goals will be developed. These strategies can be transferred across landscapes via remote-sensing based models. These questions are being dealt with by a consortium of scientists from Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Poland. The Austrian sub-project focuses on determining lipid biomarkers from peat from all sites as well as elaborating trade-offs the adaptive Management Strategy for the entire project by establishing a decision support system that can be calibrated locally.