WET HORIZONS

Part of EU Open Research Repository
Published May 24, 2023 | Version v1
Publication Open

Wetscapes: Restoring and maintaining peatland landscapes for sustainable futures

Creators

  • 1. Utrecht University
  • 2. ROR icon Radboud University Nijmegen
  • 3. ROR icon B-Ware (Netherlands)
  • 4. ROR icon Universität Greifswald
  • 5. Greifswald Mire Centre
  • 6. ROR icon University of Southampton
  • 7. Euroconsult Mott MacDonald
  • 8. ROR icon Naturalis Biodiversity Center

Description

Peatlands are among the world’s most carbon-dense ecosystems and hotspots of carbon storage. Although peatland drainage causes strong carbon emissions, land subsidence, fires and biodiversity loss, drainage-based agriculture and forestry on peatland is still expanding on a global scale. To maintain and restore their vital carbon sequestration and storage function and to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement, rewetting and restoration of all drained and degraded peatlands is urgently required. However, socio-economic conditions and hydrological constraints hitherto prevent rewetting and restoration on large scale, which calls for rethinking landscape use. We here argue that creating integrated wetscapes (wet peatland landscapes), including nature preserve cores, buffer zones and paludiculture areas (for wet productive land use), will enable sustainable and complementary land-use functions on the landscape level. As such, transforming landscapes into wetscapes presents an inevitable, novel, ecologically and socio-economically sound alternative for drainage-based peatland use.

This publication is supported by the WET HORIZONS project

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Additional details

Funding

European Commission
WET HORIZONS – WET HORIZONS - upgrading knowledge and solutions to fast-track wetland restoration across Europe 101056848