Wise use of drained peatlands in a bio-based economy: Development of improved assessment practices and sustainable techniques for mitigation

Drainage of peatlands for grass production in Norway is important for agriculture, especially in Western and Northern Norway, but leads to significantly increased greenhouse gas emissions and reduced biodiversity. In the NFR funded PEATWISE project NIBIO collaborated with partners in Europe and new Zealand to find methods and approaches to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from peatland agriculture. Two types of potential land management methods were studied within the project, mitigation by raising and controlling the water table level or change of soil properties by adding different materials. Rewetting can reduce carbon emission, but water levels must be kept stable just below the soil surface, which is in many cases difficult and exclude conventional agriculture. The initial drainage of peatlands has often been a government driven policy to mitigate severe socio-economic risks related to emigration, food security, unemployment and poverty. Climate change can in the future result in prolonged growing seasons in boreal regions but a warmer and drier soil environment could further increase organic matter decomposition. In dry years, like 2018, peat soils with in general large amounts of water stored in the profile, secured the grass production on many farms when the minerals soils suffered from great yield depression. A change towards land use with higher water tables needs incentives and long-term plans that are adapted to local conditions and socioeconomic constraints. PeatWise information is also made available at https://eragas.eu/research-projects/peatwise.

1. Review and discuss options for peatland agriculture with reduced greenhouse gas emission 2. Test out effects of paludiculture and cultivation options to reduce GHG emissions 3. Study protein extracts and potential use of paludiculture crops for feed 4. Find out stakeholder opinions and outline recommendation for policy development

Drained peatlands are important contributors to GHG emissions. For sound land management policies and decision making, an improved scientific knowledge base of GHG fluxes and transparent and verifiable methods for measuring and accounting for emissions reductions is needed. PEATWISE will build on past experience and interdisciplinary research to quantify emission factors from different land uses and production systems such as agriculture, silviculture, and paludiculture. PEATWISE will develop and refine sustainable soil and water management technologies for managed peatlands to reduce GHG emissions and maintain biomass production in different land use systems. A combination of on-going long term studies carried out in different regions and studies refining or testing new innovative ideas will be used. A general water table-GHG relationship will be developed which enables land-users and land and water authorities to quantify the effects of water management mitigation technologies. Paludiculture, involving production of flooding tolerant species which can be used for biorefinery, biomaterials and bioenergy, is another mitigation option that will be tested. Soil management technologies will be tested in field trials. PEATWISE will work with stakeholders such as farmers, policy makers and industry. Incentivizing management options that reduce emissions from the use of peatlands will be essential to policy that integrates land use change in the 2030 GHG mitigation framework. Collaborations between European and New Zealand researchers will provide opportunities for knowledge transfer across a wider peatland context than has been achieved before. PEATWISE will analyze existing incentive based policy instruments for different ecosystem services in each case study country to develop a coherent strategy that allows complementarity and bundling of governmental and private sector incentive funding schemes.