PaludiZentrale - Coordination and networking of large projects to jointly answer key questions to paludiculture and develop recommendations for action

Most peatlands and other carbon-rich soils in Germany are drained and responsible for 7% of national greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Peatlands used for agriculture account for 43 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalents per year, or 80% of these emissions. Rewetting such areas would be an effective strategy to reduce their GHG emissions. This does not mean that productive land use has to be abandoned, as plants grown on rewetted peatlands can be used for many purposes, e.g. as horticultural substrates, building materials and bioplastics. However, the implementation of so-called paludiculture is still limited to small-scale projects as it poses many challenges for farmers, including complex authorisation procedures, high installation and maintenance costs, limited management expertise and the lack of established value chains for the biomass produced.

To support the transition to paludiculture, the German government is funding ten large-scale, long-term projects across different peatland regions of the country. The shared goal of these projects is to implement on a practical scale all steps from the planning of rewetting to the establishment and management of paludiculture up to the processing and marketing of the products. The projects include scientific monitoring to assess the impact of paludiculture on GHG emissions, nutrient fluxes, biodiversity and other ecological parameters as well as on economic and socio-economic conditions. In order to obtain nationwide representative results, the studies accompanying the projects need to be carried out using comparable methods and the data must be analysed comprehensively. Therefore, these projects work together in a networked called “PaludiNetz”, established and coordinated by the project “PaludiZentrale”. A key element of the PaludiNetz are the thematic working groups which consist of members that are responsible for the respective topics in their projects. In the working groups methods are tested and defined, results discussed and syntheses planned and carried out. Here, we will present the project’s approach and describe the cooperation within the PaludiNetz and with other paludiculture initiatives.