Mapping Peat Soils and their Restoration Potential in Austria: Comparing Approaches and Limitations

Knowledge about the extent, distribution and the state of drained peat soils as well as the suitability for measures to promote biodiversity and terrestrial carbon storage is urgently needed for the formulation of restoration plans for organic soils in the context of the EU nature restoration regulation. Recently, a probability map showing the potential distribution of peat soils in Austria was developed via modelling within the project MOIST (Forstner et al., in preparation). This map predicts the likelihood of occurrence of peat soil based on physical properties such as soil properties, climate, relief features, vegetation indices, parent material. However, factors like current land use intensity or drainage were not considered in the probability map. For the localisation of areas potentially relevant for the improvement of biodiversity and carbon storage via restoration measures, a suitability assessment was developed within the same project by an expert-based approach. It categorizes areas by their potential suitability for restoration depending on factors such as land use intensity and drainage. So far, the probability map and the suitability layer have not yet been combined to localise areas suitable and important for restoration measures.

In this study we want to methodologically analyse the combination of the probability map with the suitability layer. The results will be critically compared with other approaches for localising peat soils, e.g. the map of organic soils developed for the Austrian greenhouse gas inventory and the Mire Inventory Austria, as well as European maps. The study will compare the extent of (drained) peat soils in NUTS3-Regions in Austria determined by the different approaches and critically discuss differences and uncertainties. Furthermore, the predictions will be compared with ten on-site data collections.

The analysis will help to identify limitations and potentials of the probability map and the suitability layer for effectively and correctly using these tools to support decisions and planning restoration measures.