Science

Greifswald’s peatland scientists publish about 20 peer-reviewed and 50 other peatland-related publications each year, including contributions in Nature, Global Change Biology, Journal of Biogeography, The Holocene, Quaternary Science Reviews, Biodiversity and Conservation, etc. A Greifswald-edited book series on peatland topics, published by Schweizerbart Science Publishers Stuttgart, includes the books „Landschaftsökologische Moorkunde“ (Succow & Joosten 2001) , „Carbon credits from peatland rewetting“ (Tanneberger & Wichtmann 2011) , "Paludiculture - productive use of wet peatlands" (Wichtmann et al. 2016), and "Mires and peatlands of Europe" (Joosten et al. 2017). One further volume about paludiculture plants is in preparation.

 

Within the interdisciplinary collaborative project WETSCAPES the Greifswald Mire Centre and partners elaborate the scientific basis for a sustainable utilisation of fens and wet coastal sites, especially for degraded and rewetted areas. The Greifswald Mire Centre is also responsible for the project's knowledge transfer. News on WETSCAPES are available here.

 

Greifswald regularly organizes peatland-related scientific workshops and conferences. In 2006, about 400 scientists attended the 5th meeting of the European chapter of the Society for Ecological Restoration in Greifswald. In 2013, about 150 scientists and practitioners discussed Paludiculture during a conference on ‘Reed as a renewable resource’. The follow-up conference Renewable resources from wet and rewetted peatlands - RRR 2017 will take place in September 2017.

 

Since 2013, the largest peatland library of Western Europe, the Peatland and Nature Conservation International Library (PeNCIL) with already more than 15,000 volumes, is being set up as a public private partnership of Greifswald University, the Michael Succow Foundation, and private persons .

 

Greifswald has drawn from a range of funding organisations for its research, including the United Nations (UNEP, UNDP, FAO, UNESCO), the European Union (EU), the German Research Foundation (DFG), the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi), the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL), the German Federal Environment Agency (UBA), the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN), the Ministry of Agriculture, the Environment and Consumer Protection of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the UK Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC), PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, Alterra, the Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt (DBU), the German Peat Society (DGMT), the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and Wetlands International (WI), as well as private companies such as Vattenfall Europe Mining AG and Sime Darby Plantation SDN BHD.

 

Our scientific focal areas include:

  • Palaeoecology
  • Ecology of peatmosses (Sphagnum
  • Greenhouse gas emissions from peatlands 
  • Research on paludiculture / Fens
  • Research on paludiculture / Bogs
  • Peatland vegetation
  • Peatland biodiversity
  • Ecosystem dynamics and landscape development
  • Landscape economics