News
2022
by NK
Peatland plants are the best CO2 reservoirs
New paper in Science
06/05/2022 Wetlands such as peatlands, salt marshes, mangrove forests and seagrass beds store about five times more carbon per square metre than forests and 500 times more than oceans, an international team including Greifswald peatland scientist Prof. Dr. Hans Joosten has now shown in a recent article Recovering wetland biogeomorphic feedbacks to restore the world's biotic carbon hotspots in the renowned academic journal Science. The reason: In wet ecosystems, plant growth and carbon deposition in the soil stimulate each other. The paper, co-authored by scientists of the Netherlands Institute of Oceanography (NIOZ), Utrecht University, Radboud University Nijmegen, the University of Groningen and the University of Greifswald, also contains good news: protection and restoration of such wetlands can help humans to reduce the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere in view of the climate crisis. And - we are getting better at managing and restoring these ecosystems.
by NK
In the Nile catchment - peatlands?
Conference of the Nile Basin Initiative with GMC
24/01/2022 The Nile Basin Initiative organized a 3-day conference on peatlands in the Nile catchment area from January 19th - 21st January in Kampala with the support of the Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and the Succow Foundation. The conference drew attention to the fact that the Nile and its outflow are strongly influenced by the water regulation of tropical peatlands in the upper catchment area on the Great Lakes in East Africa. It also made aware of these areas as vast carbon stores.
In an study on local peatland distribution in 2019 the Greifswald Mire Centre could show how much carbon these peatlands potentially store and could thus arouse the interest of the countries bordering the river. Thereupon, government and civil society representatives from Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda and South Sudan attended the conference. They now have a better understanding of where to find peatlands and how they work. The topics included a climate-friendly management of peatlands and value chains for products from wet peatlands. Papyrus, a widespread peatland plant, is traditionally harvested along the Nile and its high-quality fibers are processed. Given the growing population, this form of paludiculture is not sufficient for a livelihood of many. To ensure no further areas are drained, use in paludiculture must be further developed. With the conference closing the governments of the region widely agreed on this. The Succow Foundation is already working with partners and entrepreneurs in the DIAPOL-CE project on creative ideas for this.