News/All pieces
Postponing rewetting will warm climate for centuries
GMC-scientists warn in nature communications
02/04/2020 The positive climate effects of peatland rewetting are determined by the long-term avoidance of carbon dioxide, not by the emission of methane. A research team from the Universities of Rostock and Greifswald shows this in the article Prompt rewetting of drained peatlands reduces climate warming despite methane emissions in the scientific journal nature communications. According to the scientists rapid action is therefore needed to promptly rewet global peatlands. The longer this is postponed, the greater the climate damage.
The team of the WETSCAPES project comes to this conclusion by analysing the worldwide unique data collection on peatland area and land use of the Global Peatland Database of the Greifswald Mire Centre. The scientists investigated the effects of various land use scenarios in a simulation analysis. They calculated the quantity and climate impact of the individual greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere in annual steps up to the year 2100.
Peatlands and CAP
New position paper to keep digital contact
24/03/2020 Instead of meeting Members of European Parliament today – one of the many events cancelled due to the current Corona pandemic – GMC together with many partners distributed a new position paper on peatlands and the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The main target is to facilitate the new environmental ambitions of the Post-2020 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and to create coherence between agricultural and climate policies by safeguarding and stimulating the preservation of carbon-rich soils through protection of peatlands. The paper summarises current knowledge and lists solutions and recommendations, and has been compiled together with more than 20 research institutions and NGOs from across the EU. The event in European Parliament, which was to be hosted by MEP Peter Jahr and MEP Michal Wiezik and organised jointly by the Greifswald Mire Centre (GMC), the Interdisciplinary Research Centre for Baltic Sea Region Studies (IFZO), the National University of Ireland Galway and Wetlands International, can be hopefully held later this year.
Paludi + Design
Workshop by GMC and Art University Halle
01/03/2020 Braiding cattail leaves, felting seed hair, cooking peat moss - at the end of February, 15 art and design students at Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle (die BURG) experimented with material from paludiculture plants. Small baskets, innovative seating and new fabrics were created in this first workshop in cooperation between the Greifswald Mire Centre and the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle. The sustainable raw materials are interesting for the designers since they have not been explored in art so far. At the same time the materials meet their standards of climate friendliness. The GMC values this cooperation as an opportunity for new ideas with chic and well-reviewed manufacturing chains for paludicultural products. In an accompanying public lecture, the GMC gave an introduction to the diverse world of peatlands, especially rewetted areas, and the use of paludiculture biomass.
World Wetlands Day 2020
3 x peatland participation and experience
02/02/2020 On the occasion of the World Wetlands Day (WWD), the Greifswald Moor Centrum offered three times “Join in and Experience” around peatlands on Saturday, February 1st, 2020. This gave people in the region the opportunity to find out more about peatlands and to help preserve them.
Around 30 volunteers lent a hand in the hands-on campaign in Mannhagener Moor between Greifswald and Stralsund on Saturday, February 1st. The task was to cut and remove wood to create habitat for cotton grass, sundew or the rare mother-of-pearl butterfly. The hands-on activities in Mannhagener Moor, an area under the responsibility of the Succow Foundation, help to develop the moor again into an intact biotope.
On the same day, the Succow Foundation invited visitors to the Karrendorfer Wiesen for a free tour of around three hours. Along the embankment, around 40 visitors could observe thousands of herons and mountain ducks on Lake Kooser, first groups of iron ducks on the island of Koos or geese on the salt grassland. The traveling exhibition "Moor, climate protection and paludiculture" of the Greifswald Moor Centrum was officially opened on February 1st in the chalk hall of the Königsstuhl National Park Center. It explains why intact peatlands are climate savers and how they can be used sustainably, and can be seen there until the end of March.
Peatlands at COP25
Summary: Topic set, huge need for action
13/12/2019 On 13th December the UNFCCC Conference in Madrid came to an end after tough negotiations. The summary of the peatland and climate team of the Greifswald Mire Centre on site: Unsatisfactory to sobering. The topics of peatland and climate protection, restoration and sustainable use were more present than ever before in the conference's supporting programme. On the opening day, the GMC had organized a side event "Mapping, Monitoring and Climate-Friendly Management of Peatlands" together with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the Japanese Agency for International Cooperation (JICA) and the Global Environmental Centre (GEC) from Malaysia. On 4th December, a theme day in the Indonesian country pavilion focused on climate-friendly peatland management, especially in tropical latitudes. On 5th December, the Global Peatlands Initiative, of which the GMC is a founding member, presented itself in the German national pavilion. Internationally, politicians as well as representatives of NGOs see wet and rewetted peatlands as an efficient nature-based solution for climate protection and adaptation to climate change.
GMC funding granted
NUE supports our work from Greifswald to Brussels
07/12/2019 For the next two years, the Norddeutsche Stiftung für Umwelt und Entwicklung (NUE) is supporting the development of the Greifswald Mire Centre. Scientific expertise on peatland is to be transferred to voluntary organisations and politics. The GMC leaders Dr. Franziska Tanneberger and Greta Gaudig recently spoke with Vorpommern farmers and nature conservationists, Chancellor Angela Merkel and EU parliamentarians about the potentials of moor climate protection. As a "generational change" is ongoing, NUE will support the partners in the GMC to strengthe capacity and maintain the GMC as a successful and thriving partnership. The University of Greifswald, partner in the GMC, will set up the first permanent professorship for peatland sciences in Germany in 2020 with the support of the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and the Stifterverband der deutschen Wissenschaft.
Specifically: 5 measures for CAP
Proposals for peatland and climate protection
06/12/2019 In Germany, organic soils account for only 7% of the area used for agriculture, but cause 37% of the emissions from agriculture. The EU average is similar. However, the current Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union (EU) does not take this into account. In the policy paper Promoting climate protection through peatland protection - Using the opportunities of CAP reform (German only), the Greifswald Mire Centre and Landcare Germany (DVL) now make proposals for the reorientation of the CAP in Germany that will hopefully feed into the upcoming reform of the CAP. The partners in the MoKli project suggest, among other things, more pilot areas and support programmes for sustainable peatland use and the recognition of climate protection achievements by ‚carbon farmers‘.
Sphagnum Species of the World
New book by GMC’s peat moss expert
05/12/2019 The comprehensive volume Sphagnum Species of the World by Sphagnum expert Dr. Dierk Michaelis has just been released in English. Peat mosses are of key ecological and economic importance among the mosses and populate almost all continents. In the book 292 Sphagnum species are described in detail and presents keys for their identification, supplemented by data on habitats, geographical distribution and lists of synonyms. 435 pages strong, the volume issued by Schweizerbart Science Publishers represents the updated, supplemented English language version of the author's original peat moss flora of 2011 (in German), the first overall presentation of Sphagnum since Carl Warnstorf's "Sphagnologia Universalis" of 1911. Thus, the Greifswald Mire Centre proudly congratulates its member and author Dierk Michaelis!
Reform = opportunity
Talks on peatland farming in the EU Parliament
04/12/2019 The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is decisive for the agricultural use of peatlands in Europe. Although peatlands account for only 4% of agricultural land in the EU average, emissions from agricultural peatlands contribute 25% of total greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. With the current reform of agricultural policy, there is a great opportunity to initiate a change in peatland management in Europe, to promote the management of rewetted peatlands and to phase out support on drained peatlands (see also recent GMC policy brief). Dr. Franziska Tanneberger (GMC), together with colleagues from Wetlands International European Association and Interreg Care-Peat project, spoke about peatland distribution and climate relevance in Europe to 13 members of the European Parliament, among them Vice President Mairead McGuinness (Ireland) and agricultural policy expert Peter Jahr (Germany).
Sit-in in the fisherman’s fountain
Greifswald Mire Centre at global climate strike
29/11/2019 Despite chilly temperatures and drab weather the GMC members came for a sit-in in the Greifswald fisherman’s fountain during the global climate strike at 29th November. While they had demonstrated in the same fountain in September - but standing - they now wanted to show: The climate crisis is getting more dramatic than anticipated and sea levels are rising. Worldwide three times more people will be affected by coastal flooding than hitherto predicted. We will not only get wet feet, but climate change will severely affect us if we do not take action. Global climate goals cannot be achieved without rewetting of peatlands worldwide. It is one of the most time- and cost-effective measures for climate protection but still rarely considered. In Mecklenburg-Vorpommern 30 % of the federal state’s greenhouse gas emissions are caused by peatland drainage – an amount that could largely be mitigated by rewetting.