Back to search

MILJØFORSK-Miljøforskning for en grønn samfunnsomstilling

Peatland Rewetting In Nitrogen-Contaminated Environments: Synergies and trade-offs between biodiversity, climate, water quality and Society

Alternative title: Restorering av torvmark under nitrogenforurensning: Synergier og kompromisser mellom biologisk mangfold, klima, vannkvalitet og samfunn

Awarded: NOK 2.9 mill.

PRINCESS investigates the potential of alternative land uses on rewetted peatlands to tackle the major environmental challenges of Europe: greenhouse gas emissions, nitrogen pollution, and biodiversity loss. The alternative landuses studied in PRINCESS include high-intensity paludiculture, low-intensity paludiculture, and wilderness. The research is carried out at multiple study sites in Center Europe spanning from highly nitrogen polluted west to more oligotrophic east. The research questions include the impacts of land use on the biodiversity of plants and microbes and their functions, greenhouse gas emissions, geochemistry, and hydrology. These research questions are studied across scales using both largely controlled laboratory experiments and field monitoring at plot and catchment scales. The Norwegian contribution concentrates on detailed laboratory experiments to investigate the regulation of carbon and nitrogen cycles by vegetation. The study is carried out in collaboration with university of Antwerp, who run a year-long mesocosm experiment on greenhouse gas emissions as affected by differing source soil (nutrient-rich and nutrient poor peatland), vegetation (bare peat, vascular plants, mosses and combination of mosses and vascular plants) and nitrogen loading. The task of NINA is to investigate how those parameters affect key soil decomposition functions, more specifically respiration, denitrification and methane production and consumption. The change in those functions is quantified by measuring them before and after the mesocosm experiment. In 2022, we ran the start point experiments, where we targeted the functions in the source soil and aim at running the end-point experiments specifying the effect of vegetation and nitrogen loading in 2023. Source soil did not affect denitrification, but both methane production and methane consumption were higher and, surprisingly, heterotrophic respiration lower in the nutrient rich soil compared to the nutrient poor soil. PRINCESS -project participated in organizing an EGU -session titled "Peatland Management and Restoration" https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/egu22/sessionprogramme#

-

PRINCESS will investigate the potential of alternative land uses on rewetted peatlands to tackle the major environmental challenges of Europe: greenhouse gas emissions, nitrogen pollution and biodiversity loss. All relevant EU policy objectives include rewetting drained peatlands as an essential ecosystem-based solution. To the date obvious synergies and trade-offs both within (e.g. between carbon dioxide and methane emissions) and between the policy objectives (e.g. between emissions, biodiversity and economic returns) remain unquantified. Such quantification is crucial for optimizing between alternative land use options for rewetted peatlands, i.e. high-intensity paludiculture, low-intensity paludiculture, and wilderness. PRINCESS will 1) focus on the peatlands which are the largest sources of GHG and affected most by nitrogen loads, i.e. temperate fens. Results, however, are relevant across drained-and-to-be-rewetted peatlands in the temperate and boreal zones. 2) bring together complementary skills from six peatland-rich countries 3) analyse crucial processes under highly controlled conditions in the laboratory and in mesocosms, test them under more realistic conditions in the field, and model and upscale them to catchment and EU scale 4) use these different scales of study to maximize internal (sound interpretation of causal effects) and external (their relevance) validity 5) apply the most advanced techniques and methods from biogeochemistry, microbial ecology, plant ecology, socioeconomic modeling on and across scales, using measurable and quantifiable indicators. PRINCESS will provide vital scientific information for agricultural land use policies for peatlands in the EU by evaluating which land use option after rewetting complies best - under high nitrogen loads - with key policy objectives such as healthy ecosystems, climate change mitigation and adaptation, clean water, fair income to farmers, or, taken together, a greener and more sustainable Europe.

Publications from Cristin

No publications found

No publications found

No publications found

No publications found

Funding scheme:

MILJØFORSK-Miljøforskning for en grønn samfunnsomstilling