Climate protection and adaptation potential in Bavaria's peatlands (KliMoBay)
"Peatlands" represent the entirety of the approx. 220,000 ha of organic soils in Bavaria, including peatlands and peatland succession soils. This area corresponds to the area covered by the 2015 peatland soil map of the Bavarian State Office for the Environment. Peatland soils are among the most climate-sensitive soils. They emit around five percent of the total anthropogenic greenhouse gases on three percent of Bavaria's surface area (UBA 2016, Drösler et al. in prep.). The German Advisory Council on the Environment has called for emissions from peatlands to be reduced by 80 - 95 % by 2050 (SRU 2012). The "Climate Protection Plan 2050" (Bund 2016) and the "KliP 2050 Bavaria" highlight measures for climate protection and adaptation on peatlands. Through Bavarian programs for renaturation (as part of KliP 2020 and 2050) and the renaturation measures of the Bavarian State Forests, approx. 6,000 ha have already been renaturalized.
Occasion and reference to the "Peatlands Master Plan"
Bavaria is now launching a peatlands master plan to bundle all peatland activities. A key objective is to reduce emissions from Bavaria's peatlands by at least a third by 2050. In order to achieve and, if possible, exceed this target, a comprehensive strategy is required that
- establishes the technical basis for deriving climate protection and adaptation measures,identifies knowledge deficits,
- prioritized areas for action,
- identifies climate protection and adaptation potentials in Bavarian peatlands in terms of space, content and time up to 2050 based on scenarios and
- develops a monitoring concept for target achievement in line with international MRV (measurable, reportable, verifiable) Criteria for climate protection projects and national climate protection measures.
The KliMoBay project offers results that can support the Bavarian Peatlands Master Plan in these key areas. The main output of KliMoBay is the first-time development of area-wide climate protection potential maps and adaptation potential maps, including an associated catalog of measures differentiated in terms of space, content and time with a perspective up to 2050. Annual model-based area-wide emission maps are calculated to monitor success.
Conception as a joint project under the management of HSWT
The interdisciplinary nature of the topic of KliMoBay can only be addressed comprehensively in the form of an interdisciplinary consortium and along a methodologically sophisticated modular concept. Between the modules, there is close cooperation between the four sub-projects, which are responsible for the respective module management. This is a prerequisite for the successful implementation of the joint project. In contrast to a loose project network of independent sub-projects, the coordination of networked sub-projects plays a central, steering role in a collaborative project.
A key advantage of interdisciplinary collaboration lies in the innovative breadth and mix of the consortium: it ranges
- from greenhouse gas measurement to balance modeling,from hydrological process understanding to Agriculture practice,from historical data and in-situ measurements to remote sensing for area data, the latest remote sensing methods and modeling approaches,from a strong scientific base with an international reputation to a strong network in Bavarian politics and practice.
Only in this constellation (interdisciplinary approach) is it possible to tackle such a complex issue complex issue from natural science to practical relevance to action strategies for decision-makers.
Sub-projects of the University of Applied Sciences Weihenstephan-Triesdorf
Prof. Dr. Matthias Drösler from the Department of Vegetation Ecology at the Institute of Ecology and Landscape, director of the Peatland Science Centre, is leading the two sub-projects carried out at HSWT and is also the joint project leader of the overall project.
Sub-project 1A: Coordination and integration
The task of coordination is to facilitate smooth cooperation between the partners with regard to coordination between the sub-projects and thus between the modules, data exchange and data provision, adherence to deadlines, the organization of workshops and teleconferences and their recording, the preparation and drafting of project reports, support with financial processing, etc. The task of content integration is to ensure a common technical orientation, to define the interfaces between the modules and to ensure that the content-related cooperation between the modules is efficient and that the handover products are coordinated at the interfaces. The integrative modules with the participation of virtually all sub-projects are managed in terms of content and described here.
This sub-project deals with the core topic of the project: trace gas exchange and climate relevance of peatlands. Partial data sets are already available from various preliminary projects, which will be incorporated into the KliMoBay project. A synthesis of existing greenhouse gas (GHG) measurement data for Bavaria will be carried out in order to generate regionalized emission factors on the one hand and to derive control factors for modelling on the other (Module 1). In site/use combinations and possible hotspots of fens and raised bogs (e.g. subsurface irrigation) where there is insufficient evidence, additional GHG measurements and modeling will be carried out to derive annual balances and improve the state of knowledge on control factors (modules 2 and 3). Topics here are in particular long-term effects of succession stages after renaturation and management, which are particularly urgent due to the methane issue, as well as subsurface irrigation systems with the great uncertainty of the possible increase in N2O emissions.
These gaps are to be filled by supplementary GHG measurements and modeling (Module 3). The results on the selection of control factors are incorporated into Modules 4, 5 and 6, which deal with the scaling of the control factors for the GHGs, among other things. In Module 7, the restrictions and synergies with biodiversity are examined in close coordination with the State Office for Environmental Protection, which are a prerequisite for not developing climate protection potential maps in Module 12, which are at the expense of deposits worthy of protection, but which additionally promote site-specific and typical biodiversity. Furthermore, the modeling for the Bavaria-wide GHG calculation will be carried out, which will be optimized from simple static to dynamic to process-oriented methods (Module 11). Finally, these models will be used to calculate the current and forecast the future climate relevance of Bavaria's peatlands (Module 11). This will create a basis for the first time for deriving the effects of various development scenarios on the GHG balance of Bavarian peatlands. Based on this, climate protection measures are developed with regard to utilization options and savings. Spatially, contextually and temporally differentiated climate protection potential maps will be developed as instruments for this purpose. (Module 12) are being developed for Bavaria.
Sub-projects of the HSWT partners
Subproject 2
- Measurement data-based derivation of hydraulic parameters, scenario-based hydrological modeling of representative peatland areas and determination of regional surface water levels for Bavarian peatlands (Prof. Dr.-Ing. Markus Disse / Dr. Gabriele Chiogna, TUM)
Subproject 3
- Soil information, climate adaptation (Dr. Annette Freibauer, LfL)
Subproject 4
- Regionalization of control factors for modelling the climate protection potential of peatlands in Bavaria using remote sensing and climate modelling (Prof. Dr. Ralf Ludwig / Dr. Philip Marzahn, LMU)
Publications
Workpackage lead (external)
Partners
Adressierte SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals)
