Care-Peat - Restoring the carbon storage capacity of peatlands

Interview with Katrien Wijns from the project lead partner Natuurpunt

Katrien Wijns studied Biology at the University of Ghent, Belgium with a focus on terrestrial ecology. Shortly after her studies she started working for the NGO Natuurpunt.

Natuurpunt is a voluntary organisation that protects and manages nature areas in Flanders (BE). With 130,000 members and thousands of active volunteers, it is the largest nature organisation in the country. It plays a leading role in setting up and managing international partnerships and projects and puts forward the central role of nature in a sustainable and carbon neutral society.

Katrien put Natuurpunt in a leading role in setting up and managing international partnerships and projects particularly as part of Interreg programmes. The projects typically put forward the central role of nature in a sustainable and carbon neutral society. At the moment Within Natuurpunt, Katrien notably in charge of coordinating the Interreg North-West Europe project Care-Peat which focuses on peatland restoration. She explains here the relevance of restoring peatlands as a way to reduce CO2 emissions and presents the impact that Care-Peat has already achieved.

What are the current main challenges and barriers for restoring peatlands in NWE?

Peatlands continue to be drained and damaged due to outdated policies, unsustainable incentives, and an overall lack of understanding of peatlands’ vital role for the climate and biodiversity.

An important step in restoring degraded peatlands is to raise water levels and thus rewet peatlands, though this is not always straightforward: effectively restoring the hydrology of a peatland can be complex if it crosses multiple domains and involves many landowners and land users.

How does the Care-Peat project help overcome these challenges?

The main objective of Care-Peat is to rewet peatlands to restore their carbon function. Within the initial project we restored seven pilot sites in Belgium, France, Ireland, The Netherlands and UK. In total we restored about 650 ha.

To roll out restoration and sustainable management of peatlands the Care-Peat partnership has been developing and piloting restoration techniques, setting up greenhouse gas predictive tools and socio-economic models for peatland managers and landowners and engaging with local and regional stakeholders, setting up working groups and national peatland platforms.

To what extent has transnational cooperation helped you address these challenges and what's the added value of cooperating with partners from other regions in North-West Europe?

By strengthening the cooperation between peatland managers, researchers and environmental network organisations Interreg NWE has helped close knowledge gaps on national and transnational levels. The Interreg NWE programme also focuses on the communication and dissemination of best practices and learnings, which has created a lot of visibility on the importance of peatlands.

Cooperation is key to work on a highly relevant theme such as climate change and the protection and restoration of peatlands. To work with partners from other regions in NWE enlarges the exchange of knowledge and expertise not only on restoration techniques and modelling of greenhouse gasses, but also in regard to engaging with local and regional stakeholders, farmers and policy makers.

"Cooperation is key to work on a highly relevant theme such as climate change and the protection and restoration of peatlands. To work with partners from other regions in NWE enlarges the exchange of knowledge and expertise not only on restoration techniques and modelling of greenhouse gasses, but also in regard to engaging with local and regional stakeholders"
Katrien Wijns

How can the conservation of peatlands support the reduction of CO2 emissions?

Intact peatlands are very important as they store huge amounts of carbon. While peatlands cover only 3% of the global land surface, they store 30% of the world’s soil carbon. However, in the European Union about 50% of peatlands are degraded due to drainage for land use (as peat extraction, agriculture and tree planting) turning them from a carbon sink into a carbon source. In drained peatlands the peat oxidizes and the stored carbon is emitted. Peat oxidation in drained peatlands is responsible for about 5% of global anthropogenic GHG emissions; that is twice the amount from aviation. About 75% of the EU’s land-related emissions from cropping and grazing result from peatland drainage, although this area covers only 2% of agricultural and grazing land. Rewetting drained peatlands can strongly reduce or stop net carbon loss immediately and restoring the natural function of peatlands can ultimately lead to carbon being sequestered from the atmosphere.

Protection and restoration of peatlands play a crucial role in climate change adaption and mitigation. Peatlands provide numerous ecosystem services: they regulate water quantity and quality and harbour highly specialized, rare and unique flora and fauna.

We visited the Irish pilot site in Cloncrow Bog. What has been achieved there and how does the pilot contribute to the project as a whole?

The pilot site includes a portion of an existing designated peatland (Cloncrow Bog), which is a Natural Heritage Area (NHA). The project area involves a drained section of approximately 36ha on the western edge, and, importantly, adjacent to the intact central raised bog*. The project site area consists of deep drainage (26ha) which allowed for the harvest of peat. Fortunately though this section did not experience extraction and presented an opportunity to restore a degraded drained bog to a more natural state.

The restoration works in Ireland entailed using engineers to create peat dams in the drains. This is a well-known and effective technique to restore degraded peatlands. The Care-Peat project also involved the creation of earthen bunding, which was one of the first restorations of its kind in Ireland. This will form an important knowledge base for the country for future restoration activities using this type of restoration.

Restorations were completed in October 2020 and immediately the water table responded, rising to within the surface of the bog. In early 2021, we have already observed growth of Sphagnum (moss plants typically grown in peatlands) at the ponded areas within the bunded cutover and restored high bog areas. The response and growth of Sphagnum during the winter months was surprising and we look forward to observing further gains with sphagnum growth.

This work was coordinated by Care-Peat partner National University of Ireland Galway.

*A bog or bogland is a wetland that accumulates peat as a deposit of dead plant materials.

Total project budget

€7.03M

ERDF allocated

€4.22M

Expected yearly reduction of emmissions

8,137

tonnes of CO2

Could you quantify some of the expected long-term results of the project? Maybe in terms of CO2 reductions?

By the end of the project in 2023, we expect a reduction of about 8,137 tonnes of carbon emissions per year from the 7 pilot sites (in total approximately 645 hectares). This is equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions from the energy usage of 1,024 homes per year (source: EPA). After 2023 we anticipate that nature conservation and other organisations all over the North-West Europe region will take further measures, resulting in the restoration of many more peatlands. And the more peatlands that are restored, the more carbon will be saved.

What is the most promising outcome you expect to achieve by the end of the project?

One of our most innovative outputs is the creation of the Carbon Farm by partner Lancashire Wildlife Trust (UK). This former intensively grazed peatland has been transformed into a Carbon Farm by removing the nutrient and grass layer, re-wetting the site, planting about 150.000 plugs of sphagnum mosses and installing a sustainable irrigation system. After one year of monitoring GHG we calculated a carbon reduction of 20 tonnes CO2-eq. per ha per year. The carbon farm is an example for farmers on how peatlands can be restored and still provide a viable income.