Restoring peatlands of the nemoral zone under conditions of varying water supply and quality

泥炭地在水和元素循环中的调节功能、碳汇功能以及在生物多样性保护中的作用日益成为科学和公众争论的焦点。特别是在持续的气候变化过程中，恢复的沼泽越来越多地暴露在极端气候下，如干旱，对植物和土壤群落以及随后的碳循环都会产生长期影响。因此，气候变化增加了沼泽恢复的现有困难和限制。这些问题还与对泥炭地退化或恢复成功的潜在指标缺乏了解有关，例如关于气体通量、生物多样性水平或水预算的动态和预算。此外，泥炭退化改变了泥炭的持水能力，降低了缓冲可用水变化的潜力，进一步限制了再湿和恢复。从古生态数据中，泥炭生长的水分条件(碳积累)、对过去发生的环境变化的潜在恢复能力、潜在植被和碳积累速率可以作为设定恢复目标和权衡的基础。持续的气候变化和更频繁的热浪和干旱对沼泽植被的恢复工作构成了严重的威胁，特别是依赖于从降雨中输入足够的营养贫乏的水。该项目以前所未有的方式结合了泥炭地相关学科的关键方法：在分项目中，我们涉及：i)古生态重建和参考条件以及退化/恢复能力指标，ii)当前的水文学、生物多样性水平和微生物群落，iii)基于小室和涡动协方差技术和现有长期数据的核心站点的二氧化碳(CO2)和甲烷(CH4)预算，iv)最新的遥感监测方法，包括从地块到景观尺度的提升，在新的机器学习方法的支持下，v)在生物多样性、碳预算、二氧化碳和甲烷交换及其恢复能力方面的权衡，如果只能部分达到目标水平，以及vi)通过与农民、泥炭行业、自然保护者、水资源管理人员和行政机构的密切合作，扩展和知识转移。该项目首次基于对泥炭样品的古生态和生物地球化学信息的最新评估来检查和评估沼泽恢复路径，将这些数据置于景观生态背景中，并为未来退化和恢复的泥炭沼泽的评估和监测提供强大的遥感工具。明确的重点、工作包的紧密耦合以及恢复生态学通常不考虑的数据的应用，使该项目非常具有创新性，并可能产生能够验证沼泽恢复在不断变化的气候和水文中的适用性的结果。

The regulatory functions of peatlands in water and element cycles, their carbon sink function, and their role in biodiversity conservation have increasingly become the focus of scientific and public debate. Particularly in the course of ongoing climate change, restoring bogs are increasingly exposed to climate extremes, such as drought, with long-lasting effects on both plant and soil communities and, subsequently, on carbon cycling. Thus, climate change adds to existing difficulties and limitations in bog restoration. These problems are also related to poor knowledge of potential indicators of peatland degradation or restoration success, such as on the dynamics and budgets of gas fluxes, levels of biodiversity, or water budgets. Moreover, peat degradation alters the water holding capacities and reduces the potential to buffer variations in water availability, further constraining rewetting and restoration.From palaeoecological data, moisture conditions for peat growth (carbon accumulation), potential resilience to environmental changes as occurred in the past, potential vegetation, and carbon accumulation rates can be inferred as a basis to set restoration targets and trade-offs. Ongoing climate change and more frequent occurrence of heatwaves and droughts posea severe threat particularly to efforts of restoration of bog vegetation, relying on sufficient input of nutrient-poor water from rainfall.The project combines key methods from peatland-related disciplines in an unprecedented way: In subprojects we address i) palaeoecological reconstruction and reference conditions and indicators of degradation/resilience, ii) current hydrology, levels of biodiversity, and microbial communities, iii) carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) budgets of core sites based on chambers and eddy covariance techniques and building on available long-term data, iv) latest remote sensing monitoring approaches including upscalingfrom the plot to the landscape scale, supported by novel machine learning approaches, v) trade-offs in biodiversity, C-budgets, CO2 and CH4 exchange, and resilience thereof, if targeted levels can only partly be met, and vi) outreach and knowledge transfer in by close collaboration with farmers, peat industry, nature conservationists, water managers, and administrative bodies.The project examines and evaluates, for the first time, bog restoration pathways based on a state of the art evaluation of paleoecological and biogeochemical information from peat samples, putting this data into a landscape ecology context, and delivering powerful remote sensing tools for future assessment and monitoring of degraded and restored peat bogs. The clear focus, the tight coupling of work packages and the application of data commonly not considered in restoration ecology make the project very innovative and likely to yield results that can verify the applicability of bog restoration in a changing climate and hydrology.