News/All pieces

Ground-breaking ceremony & Sernitz

Rewetting has started

01/04/2025  A symbolic ground-breaking ceremony marks the start of the establishment of a wet meadow paludiculture by the toMOORow initiative - wet mires for a sustainable future. The peat meadows in the Sernitz Mire serve as a model project: drainage ditches are now being filled in, sills are being built in the flow to retain water and a sustainable use through paludiculture covering an area of around 80 hectares will then be established with local farmers. The measures help to keep water in the landscape, reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 1,200 tons of CO₂ equivalents per year and enable the reintroduction of typical peatland plant and animal species.
The initiative is thus continuing years of work to restore natural conditions in the Sernitz Moor in the “Schorfheide-Chorin” biosphere reserve as part of the LIFE project “Lesser Spotted Eagle”. In consultation with local residents and land users, measures for water retention were developed, pastures for water buffalo were established and a mire experience trail was designed, to name just a few examples of the successful project.
The Federal Ministers Steffi Lemke and Cem Özdemir attended the launch, as they see the activities in the Sernitz as a strong signal for sustainable peatland use by the toMOORow initiative of the Succow Foundation, partner in the Greifswald Mire Center, and the Michael Otto Environmental Foundation.

Books n‘ Bogs

Long open Night of Libraries on April 4th at the Peatland Library
21/03/2025 Peatland pope Prof. Hans Joosten invites all interested - no, not to the peatland - but to a library where inspiration drips from the walls and thousands of books in all genres and languages are available on one topic only - peatlands. In its new home, the former lecture hall of the “Alte Chemie” in the courtyard of Greifswald's Soldmannstraße 16, the renovation work has been completed. Boxes and boxes of books are currently moving into the listed building and filling the shelves of the barrier-free, high-ceilinged room with two galleries. With a collection of 50,000 publications, the special collection on moors is an important part of the Greifswald Moor Centrum and is of international significance. Statics, financing, contaminated sites - there were and still are many challenges to overcome on the way from the vision of a library to its realization.

On April 4th, the Long Night of Libraries, Hans Joosten will give a guided tour of the 1905 wing of the building in German from 9 p.m. and talk about its history, the extensive decontamination and the new boggy contents.

Afterwards, there will be English samples from “Books n' Bogs”, a project by the collective re-peat earth. International, young and creative, its members are committed to restoring and conserving peatlands and raising public awareness of their importance. For the book project, they documented the relationship between people and bogs around the Irish town of Abbeyleix. They are also driving forward the “Mapping Peatland Justice” project in the Greifswald Peatland Library and are using the occassion to discuss it with visitors. In English and (almost) open end.
Free of charge, but with registration at: bibliothek@greifswaldmoor.de

MoorPower

Solar on peatland feasible?

17/03/2025 Competition for land in Germany is fierce, but is it possible to combine uses such as photovoltaics and the rewetting of peatland? The newly launched MoorPower project is taking a close look at the general feasibility of solar pan elson peatland with simultaneous rewetting. It is also investigating whether this concept makes rewetting more attractive for farmers.
Since the beginning of 2023, the German government has been promoting the construction of solar systems on peatland that was previously drained for agriculture if it is permanently rewetted. The concept is new. So far, there is only one PV system on rewetted peatland known in Germany and none abroad. TThus, there is considerable need for testing and research in order to be able to assess possibilities and effects.

“It is important to develop only drained and heavily degraded peatlands, i.e. peatlands currently used for agriculture, for the dual use of carbon storage in peat and the production of renewable energy via photovoltaics. It must be prevented that peatlands are used for the installation of photovoltaic systems without being rewetted, because then the greenhouse gas emissions from the peatlands would continue,” said Prof. Dr. Jürgen Kreyling from the University of Greifswald. “Peatlands and peat soils of nature conservation value within legally protected areas are excluded.”

And this is what the research looks like in practice: On an experimental site in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the scientists are building system designs on a total of six hectares of fen that is still used for agriculture, with different mounting heights, solar module types and foundations. They then combine each PV system variant with three different water levels and examine their ecological impact. The project team is testing different materials, coatings and methods for the foundations of the special PV systems on a material test area in Baden-Württemberg. As shade from the solar modules can have an impact on the growth of typical peatland plants, they are also investigating this in pot experiments. The scientists at the Thünen-Institute are analyzing the impact of peatland PV on the greenhouse gas balance on a practical scale on around 200 hectares of rewetted peatland with photovoltaics in Lower Saxony.

Research for MoorPower is jointly conducted by the Universities of Greifswald and Hohenheim  Johann Heinrich von Thünen-Institute and the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE.

For World Wetlands Day:

New European Wetland Map!

02/02/2025 Just in time for World Wetlands Day a new European Wetland Map shows Europe's peatlands, floodplains and coastal wetlands more comprehensively than ever before in one map. Compiled from about 200 data sources, this map informs policy makers, land users and anyone interested in wetlands not only about their distribution and types, but also, for example, about potential areas at risk of flooding. Users can freely download the European Wetland Map, published in a collaboration with the projects ALFAwetlands, WET HORIZONS and Building a European Peatlands Alliance, for their own analyses. A vector dataset on the geographical distribution of the wetlands considered is available on a country basis in an ArcGIS geodatabase as well as a country-specific high resolution Geo-TIFF collection (grid size: 1 arcsecond).

Background: The World Wetlands Day (WWD)
This day has been drawing attention to the importance of wetlands, including peatlands, on February 2nd every year since 1997. The Ramsar Convention, the international agreement for the protection of wetlands, was adopted on February 2nd in 1971. Since 2021 the WWD has been recognized as an international day by the United Nations. Therefore, their restoration and protection is important. Due to pollution, drainage and agriculture, fires and overfishing, wetlands, which include peatlands, are under threat worldwide or have already been destroyed. Yet they are guarantors of biodiversity and climate protection. Among other things, wetlands offer people protection from drought and flooding, purify water and regulate the microclimate. In Germany, 95% of former wetlands have been drained and are no longer recognizable as such today.