Wetscapes

The project is being coordinated by the University of Rostock, the University of Greifswald is involved. Further partners are the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Neustrelitz and the Greifswald Mire Centre.
The project proposal which was submitted by the working groups Joosten, Wilmking, Kreyling and Urich, together with colleagues from Rostock, has been endorsed for funding as part of the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern’s Excellence Initiative. WETSCAPES’ aim is to establish a scientific basis for a sustainable, preserving cultivation of degraded and subsequently rewetted locations. Special emphasis will be applied to the creation of peat in percolation mires, coastal flood mires and alder carrs in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The DLR will upscale the research results and develop remotely sensed proxies for the environmental effects of drainage and rewetting. The joint field research sites of the Universities of Greifswald and Rostock are partly in the DLR’s DEMMIN test site. Knowledge transfer will be managed by the Greifswald Mire Centre. WETSCAPES’ results will flow into projects that are being carried out in parallel in Greifswald and Rostock, such as the joint project “German Peatland Protection Dialogue” (Deutscher Moorschutzdialog) (BMUB, 2015-2018) and the creation of a state strategy “Paludiculture Mecklenburg-Vorpommern” (2016). The Greifswald Mire Centre functions as a communication platform between science, practice and politics. It feeds the results into social and political processes and communicates the wishes of the potential users in the project consortium.
Webpage Wetscapes

Excerpt from the jury’s vote:

“The participating project partners have been able to demonstrate their expert knowledge in an impressive manner: In Germany, agriculture on peatlands causes approximately 3 billion euros worth of damage to the climate annually; roughly 38 % of the total emissions of greenhouse gases from the agricultural sector come from peatlands. It is yet to be explained why various methane emissions occur above rewetted peatlands. (...) The consultants are convinced that the consortium will be able to successfully tackle the questions and tasks set out in the project.”