Paludiculture Newsletter 2|2024

The sun burns from above, the dusty air flickers over gnarled, crowded bushes and trees. The red, sandy soil is only sparsely covered with grasses. You wouldn't really expect to find peatlands in the mostly dry, hot savannah region of Cerrado in central Brazil. But then the landscape suddenly thins out and the earth becomes damp and black. Sedges, grass bulrushes and small shrubs stretch far along a flat valley and are occasionally dotted with Buriti palms (Mauritia flexuosa), which reach up to 20 meters into the blue sky. In the middle of the valley along a stream, the buritis are lined up like a string of pearls. Right at the edge, where our shoes are already sinking in but our feet are not yet wet, we test the thickness of the organic soil with a folding probe and take our first samples to determine the carbon content later in the laboratory. Two hours and three boreholes later, we are standing in the middle of the peatland on 3.5 meters of peat, our legs wet up to our hips and totally sweaty, and we are surprised and happy. Our team, Cássia Munhoz, Professor of Botany at the University of Brasília, two of her students and I, are in the process of systematically mapping peatlands in the Cerrado for the first time ever in order to determine their distribution, peat thickness and stored carbon quantities.

And we actually find peatlands everywhere along the humid valleys in a kind of mosaic with other wetlands and much more frequently than we would have expected. In the Cerrado, these palm savannah formations, which occur on the permanent wetlands along shallow valleys, are called veredas.

The Cerrado is criss-crossed by a dense network of river valleys that drain this huge region, which is seven times the size of Germany, towards neighboring biomes. As a result, the Cerrado plays a very important role in the water cycle of neighboring biomes such as the Amazon region and the Pantanal. And it seems that the peatlands, which occur regularly, especially in the headwater regions of the Cerrado, help to retain and store water in the landscape during the rainy season, which is gradually released into the rivers during the dry season. This guarantees a constant flow of water even during the dry phase, which lasts several months.

Initial figures also indicate that although peatlands cover less than 1% of the Cerrado's surface area, they store over 13% of the Cerrado's total soil carbon in their soil, making them extremely important from a climate protection perspective.

Our studies on the importance of peatlands, veredas and swamp forests on peat, as well as the studies of a few other research groups, are also urgently needed and important because the destruction of nature in the Cerrado is progressing faster than in the much-noticed Amazon region. Agribusiness in particular, for example soybean cultivation, but also timber plantations, are severely disrupting the water cycle in the Cerrado. Falling groundwater levels and drying wetlands are the result. Unfortunately, the extent and scale of the deterioration of the peatlands and other wetlands has hardly been recorded. But wherever we went, we were able to observe the consequences of drying out and, for example, peat fires - ultimately the gradual disappearance of peatlands and wetlands.

In addition to the scientific work on the topic, we believe that an important step is to raise awareness in Brazil of the existence of peatlands in the Cerrado and their importance. The term peatlands (turfeiras in Portuguese) is only known to a small research community, even though the general importance of wetlands is clear.

Stay tuned for the first scientific results from our Cerrado peatland research project!

Good-humored researchers in the Brazilian peatlands. Picture: Felix Beer.

Author: Felix Beer, Greifswald Mire Center

In celebration of this year’s World Peatlands Day, the Greifswald Mire Centre warmly invites you to save the date for the 4^th international RRR conference on the Renewable Resources from Wet and Rewetted Peatlands. Taking place in Greifswald, Germany from September 23^rd to 26^th, 2025, the conference will unite experts from diverse disciplines to share insights and experiences and address pressing questions within the field of paludiculture.
In 2024, "paludiculture" marked its 25^th anniversary since being called into life, with significant advancements made in practical knowledge regarding rewetting, cultivation, processing, marketing, policy development and awareness-building, but large-scale implementation is still low. This conference aims to unite stakeholders involved in the utilisation of rewetted peatlands, welcoming scientists, landowners and users, administrators, manufactors, artists, designers and policymakers. By fostering cross-sector networks, sharing experiences and knowledge, we seek to bridge the gap between science and practice and together discuss and shape the future of paludiculture.
Through a diverse program including lectures, poster presentations, excursions, and a range of interactive events, we endeavour to facilitate meaningful dialogue and collaboration. Stay tuned for further details, including abstract submission and registration information, which will soon be available on our website. We look forward to your participation! For conference updates please visit our website rrr2025.com, or follow @greifswaldmoor on the GMC’s social media channels.

Bad prospects for peatlands in the European Climate Risk Assessment (EUCRA): 50% of Europe's peatlands are degraded and targets for their restoration are mostly not being met, the report estimates, citing scientific publications by the Greifswald Mire Center, among others. Most of the damage is man-made due to land use and drainage. Due to rising temperatures, the permafrost is thawing in many northern European peatlands and evaporation is increasing. Peat mosses are dying, wetlands are drying out and the likelihood of wildfires is increasing.

As a possible ray of hope, the report does not rule out the possibility of peatland areas spreading northwards as the permafrost thaws. Longer growing seasons could improve the vegetation in some peatlands. More plants would then also bind more carbon dioxide.

The EUCRA has identified 36 climate risks for Europe. Eight of these require immediate action and 34 are expected to reach critical and in some cases catastrophic proportions by the end of the century if the status quo continues. Southern Europe in particular is considered a hotspot for several climate risks due to water shortages and heatwaves.

At the Global Wetland Center, officially founded on World Wetland Day on February 2nd 2024, experts from the University of Copenhagen, the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland and the Danish Hydraulic Institute (DHI), a software developer for modeling, want to research how peatlands and wetlands can reduce emissions of climate-damaging greenhouse gases. Modeling tools, artificial intelligence and satellite data are being used for this purpose. The knowledge gained is intended to provide countries around the world with concrete solutions for their individual climate challenges and enable political decision-makers to coordinate actions on this basis. Software developer DHI has good contacts in politics. It has been working with the United Nations Environment Program since 1996.

The University of Galway, Ireland, hosted the European Peatlands and Policies Open Data Mapathon at the beginning of April. 20 teams of 184 people were on site or took part in the event online to collect open source data for 14 European countries, such as legal texts and data sets for mapping. Each Mapathon team worked on one country; the MoorMaidens chose Germany. On April 6th, they scoured the web for GIS data and laws at federal, state and municipal level. The result: ten peatland datasets in the form of shapefiles, plus data on land use, water and organic carbon content, as well as ten laws at national and regional level. The final map is currently being created and will be available at the end of June with lots of data from the Mapathon.

Incidentally, Mapathon is not a spelling mistake, but usually a public event - online or in the field - in which volunteers help to improve existing map material with freely accessible data. One original idea, for example, was to map risks for disaster-prone areas. This mapathon, organized by theWaterLands project and the University of Galway, worked with QGIS programme as its main GIS tool. All participants received the work of the other teams afterwards and thus benefited together. The Mapathon was of course also useful as a networking event.