Save the soil!

Support people4soil on world soil day

5/12/2016   Soils offer a lot, but do not have rights. Soils supply food, filter water, store carbon, but they are exploited, polluted and destroyed. Without healthy soils there is no habitat for humans, animals or plants. Therefore the Greifswald Mire Centre supports the People4Soil initiative. More than 400 associations have joined this European citizens' initiative. At world soil day add your voice to push the EU for specific regulations to protect the soil.

Reed as Renewable Resource 2017

Register now for one week full of paludiculture!

15/11/2016   The Greifswald Mire Centre is pleased to announce an entire conference week on paludiculture from 25th to 30th September 2017 in Greifswald, Germany. It comprises a national and an international part, a day of excursions and a Sphagnum farming workshop. Submissions of abstracts for oral or poster presentations are welcome until 28th February (inclusively). Exhibition space for companies (machinery, building material, publisher etc.) and other organisations will be provided indoors and outdoors. Register for the national and/or international conference and for excursions at www.rrr2017.com and receive regular updates about RRR2017.

From Kolkheti to Hankhausen

Georgians get informed about paludiculture

12/10/2016   The Kolkheti Lowland in Georgia is one of the smallest mire regions in the world with unique mire types like the ‘percolation bog’. Currently the management plans of the Kolkheti National Park and Kobuleti Protected Areas, harbouring the largest, most important and largely pristine mire areas in Kolkheti, are revised and will be updated with scientists from the Greifswald Mire Centre being involved.

Therefore a delegation of five Georgians sought information about paludiculture at the sphagnum farming pilot sites at Hankhausen, Lower Saxony, to discuss opportunities for implementation in Georgia and to assess its potential to support protection of Kolkheti mires. Delegates were Lasha Moistsrapishvili (chairman of the Agency of Protected Areas of Georgia, APA, at the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources Protection of Georgia), Khatuna Tsiklauri (main specialist of Scientific Research and Monitoring, APA), Aleksandre Khabeishvili (director of the Kolkheti National Park, APA), Mamuka Gvilava (focal point of Integrated Coastal Zone Management of Georgia) and Izolda Matchutadze (head of Department of Conservation of Kolkheti Mires and Water Ecosystems, Batumi Shota Rustaveli State University).
Besides the 13 ha sphagnum farming site they visited the heating plant for fen biomass in Malchin, surrounding harvest areas as well as cultivation experiments of cattail near Ueckermünde in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

Peatland meeting for Ramsar Convention

International workshop on Vilm

16/09/2016   Peatlands store twice as much carbon as the forest biomass worldwide and are huge source of greenhouse gases in many countries. To strengthen the role of peatlands in climate protection and the Ramsar Convention experts from politics, science and the private sector met for a three day workshop on the island of Vilm (Germany). The meeting report will cover guidelines for designating globally significant peatlands, best practice examples of restoration as well as ideas for the upcoming new Global Peatland Initiative. An excursion to the restored peatland Karrendorfer Wiesen and the first heating plant powered by fen biomass at Malchin complemented the workshop. It was jointly hosted by the Federal Agency for Nature Protection (BfN), the Secretariat of the Ramsar Convention, the Danish Nature Agency and the Greifswald Mire Centre. For more information see the press release Peatland protection is climate protection of the German Federal Agency for Nature Protection (German only).

Hot of the press II

„Peatland Restoration and Ecosystem Services“

27/06/2016   „Peatland Restoration and Ecosystem Services: Science, Policy, and Practice“ ist the title of the first, up-to-date and comprehensive book on peatland restoration and ecosystem services. It is 493 pages strong and unites, according to the publisher Cambridge University Press, contributions of world class experts to examine the topic from an ecological, social and economic perspective. GMC scientist may be pleased since they co-authored nine of the book’s 20 chapters. „Peatland Restoration and Ecosystem Services“ is also available as eBook.

On grandfather’s traces

C. A. Weber’s grandson visits peatland library PeNCIL

09/06/2016   Special guests in the Peatland and Nature Conservation International Library (PeNCIL) in Greifswald: At 9th July Axel Weber, grandson of the pathbreaking peatland scientist C. A. Weber (1856-1931), and his wife paid a visit to get an impression of PeNCIL library stocks and research of the Greifswald Mire Centre. Greifswald peatland scientists greatly admire his grandfather: In 2002 John Couwenberg translated Weber’s „Über die Vegetation und Entstehung des Hochmoores in Augstumal [On the vegetation and development of the raised bog of Augstumal]” (in today’s Lithuania) into English and thus made it accessible to a wider audience. This year GMC members supported Lithuanian peatland scientists issuing a Lithuanian language edition. Since very recently, also the new book can be found at PenCIL, which is generously funded by the Bernhard and Ursula Plettner Foundation. To help Axel Weber tracking his grandfather’s traces even in Lithuania, GMC scientists also put him into contact to their Lithuanian colleagues.

Integrate peatlands into EU policies

Workshop on better solutions to manage peatlands in the EU framework

23/04/2016  A few months after conclusion of the Paris agreement on Climate Change, a workshop in Brussels on 19th April 2016 addressesd the importance of peatlands and organic soils in the European Union and its Member States for biodiversity and climate change. “Peatland ecosystems are still suffering from the Cinderella syndrome” Professor Hans Joosten (Greifswald University) stated. “They contain disproportionally more organic carbon than all other terrestrial ecosystems and emit enormous amounts of CO2 when drained.” Furthermore, they provide habitats for specially adapted and rare species strictly protected by the EU’s bird and habitat directives. And yet, when it comes to policymaking – climate policymaking, in particular – peatlands remain largely out of sight. This leads to poor protection and conservation.
Within the project Peatlands in the EU Regulatory Environment the Michael Succow Foundation, Partner in the Greifswald Mire Centre (GMC), and Silvestrum have assessed the impact of EU law — on the environment, agriculture, and energy — on peatlands and organic soils in Member States, with special emphasis on case studies for Poland and Estonia. They brought together senior officers from the EU Commission, Member States’ governments, NGOs, research institutes and cooperates to call for joint action to better integrate peatland management and conservation into EU policies as instruments to improve their status across Member States.