Project leader: Prof. Dr. Florian Jansen (University of Rostock)

C3 will investigate the influence of rewetted peatlands on non-forest vegetation in their surroundings. This influence is much debated, both as a possible antidote to the drying of the whole landscape due to climate change, and at the same time as a possible hydrological threat to arable land and human settlements.

For this investigation C3 will use high precision DEM's, vegetation maps from C4, soil maps, a detailed analysis of transects at the Core/L-LExp sites, and data from several of the other WETSCPAES2.0 projects. While C1 will focus on the landscape scale water dynamics in wetscapes, C3 will focus on direct and indirect influences of the rewetting on vegetation dynamics. It will make use of Screening Sites and aims at a quantitative instead of functional estimation of impact. C3 will furthermore use the large amount of available vegetation data from the region to make predictions about biodiversity effects but also to improve vegetation typifications in a way that the influence of rewetting on surrounding non-peatland areas can be estimated.

Bioindicative analyses of the vegetation around the Screening Sites of WETSCAPES 2.0 as well as direct measurements of evapotranspiration will provide insight into the influence of rewetted peatlands on evapotranspiration, groundwater dynamic, mesoclimate, and species distribution.

The objectives of C3 are  (i) to estimate the spatial extent and strength of the influence of rewetted peatlands on their surroundings and thus (ii) to investigate how rewetting and associated vegetation changes affect landscape stability (through hydrological buffering), biodiversity, and the contribution of wetscapes to mitigating climate warming at local and regional scales, and (iii) in which cases rewetting might lead to unwanted collateral damage on agricultural land and in residential areas in the screening sites investigated.

To accomplish this, C3 will (1) use vegetation data across spatial scales obtained from vegetation surveys and transects as well as the spatio-temporal vegetation monitoring of C4 to derive detailed maps of plant available water within and beyond rewetted Screening and Core Sites; will (2) model the local groundwater dynamic across boundaries of monitoring sites based on measured water tables, and (3) measure evapotranspiration along transects across wetscapes to quantify energy fluxes and test the contribution of rewetted fens to mesoclimate.

C3 will use vegetation data from B4 (surveys) and C4 (remote sensing data and dynamics) to make bioindicative maps of water availability in and around rewetted peatlands. This will improve the predictions of landscape dynamics during the prospective rewetting by estimating the extent of influences for different mire types and spatial relationships . C3 will use the water table measurements of Z2 in combination with indicative vegetation mapping to model the hydrology at the borders of peatlands. C3 will feed into and be closely linked with S3 as the vegetation data and maps of plant available groundwater from C3 will be used in S3. Thus, C3 will provide essential outcomes for WETSCAPES2.0 and will contribute mapping of groundwater, changes in evapotranspiration and heat flux as well as biodiversity in restored wetscapes.