Rewetting

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Rewetted area in the Dead Moor with dead birch trees

Re-wetting by means of wide peat dams in the Hahnenmoor

In nature conservation and landscape management, rewetting is understood to mean measures to raise the water level in wetlands such as moors , wet meadows or floodplains with the aim of restoring or renaturing these ecosystems . The most important measures consist of the removal of drainage facilities , the damming of draining ditches or other artificial watercourses or the dismantling of flood protection facilities (creation of retention areas ) and thus the creation of a typical water balance.

By means of rewetting , an attempt is made in raised bog residues or in partially drained raised bogs to adjust the water balance typical of a bog, which is intended to bring the bog area into a natural state through a phase of renaturation. Ideally, the raised bog can be regenerated .

Re-wetting measures are also carried out on rivers and streams, which are prevented from flooding the adjacent areas , in particular by flood protection structures and straightening the watercourses. As a result, floodplain areas, wetlands and wet meadows have been lost in the past.

Importance for climate protection

Wet peat bogs are (ahead of forests) one of the most important carbon stores on earth: peat bogs make up around three percent of the world's land area, but store 30 percent of earthbound carbon, which is twice as much as all forests put together. On average, a single hectare of bog stores as much carbon as is emitted by around 1,400 cars each year.

When drained, however, peatlands emit an enormous amount of greenhouse gases , especially carbon dioxide , but also methane : 1,632 million tons of CO₂ are emitted annually by peatlands that are drained by humans (as of 2015, data from the Greifswald Moor Center), more than twice as much as by caused the worldwide air traffic per year (859 million tons). Drained peatlands are responsible for five percent of man-made CO₂ emissions in Germany. Peat fires, in turn, release an enormous amount of carbon dioxide.

Moors once made up 4.2 percent of Germany's area, around 1.5 million hectares - only five percent of these are currently near-natural, i.e. wet, bogs, the rest has been drained. The rewetting of bogs is an important way of protecting the climate, as the water saturation stops the decomposition processes of the plant parts in the peat that are responsible for the formation of carbon dioxide. At the same time, the costs of rewetting are comparatively low: the water balance of bogs can be restored with the help of simple wooden dams. The cost of rewetting bogs is between 40 and 110 euros per ton of CO₂. Under the heading of paludiculture , rewetted bogs can also be used economically.

The Global Peatlands Initiative was founded in 2016 as part of the United Nations Environment Program .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ MoorWissen | Moors | Moor protection | Rewetting. Retrieved February 12, 2019 . 
2. ^ Moors - the natural filters. Retrieved February 12, 2019 . 
3. ↑ Moors reduce CO2. Retrieved February 12, 2019 . 
4. ^ ^{A b} Susanne Abel, Alexander Barthelmes, Greta Gaudig, Nina Körner, Jan Peters: Moore - the unknown climate protectors . In: Katapult - magazine for cartography and social science . No. 11 , 2018, p. 36 .
5. ↑ Moors reduce CO2. Retrieved February 12, 2019 . 
6. ^ Moors - the natural filters. Retrieved February 12, 2019 . 
7. ↑ Global Peatlands Initiative | Peatlands Matter - for planet, people and climate. Retrieved February 12, 2019 (UK English).