Restoring the carbon storage capacity of peatlands

Care-Peat is an Interreg North-West Europe (NWE) project with 12 partners working together to reduce carbon emissions and restore the carbon storage capacity of different types of peatlands in North-West Europe. The main partnership consists of 7 knowledge institutes and 5 nature organisations from Belgium, France, Ireland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Together with 7 sub-partners and 41 associated partners, we develop and test new techniques and socio-economic strategies for carbon reduction. 

The main goal of Care-Peat is to set up and demonstrate innovative technologies for new restoration and carbon measurement techniques and involve local and regional stakeholders. Therefore, the nature organisations, together with local landowners, restore peatlands of 7  different pilot sites ranging from one to 250 hectares and demonstrate the (potential) carbon savings of the restoration. For each pilot site different restoration techniques are used - from manual management to growing additional peat moss. Throughout the project the organisations are supported by the knowledge institutes that work together to develop and test new equipment, methods and models to predict carbon flows (e.g. by the use of drones and satellites to guide restoration and provide input for carbon models). Important outputs of Care-Peat are the publication of a management and decision support tool and a set of socio-economic models concerning the best options for peatland restoration in regard to carbon storage.

In 2021, as part of the Interreg NWE programme, the Care-Peat project was given the opportunity to strengthen its scope with a ‘capitalisation project’. The aim is to apply the project results to new areas and a new target group in North-West Europe. The approval resulted in no less than 3 new partners and 6 new associated partners who joined our consortium. In the capitalisation project we develop a unified methodology for assessing GHG emissions from peatlands, that is widely applicable in North-West Europe (different peatland types and regions), and thus increase the impact of the decision support tool. Also we include farmers and farmer organisations as a new main target group by engaging with them directly and incorporate best practices for carbon savings on farmland. The project runs from 2019-2023, with a total budget of 7.03 million euros, of which 4.22 million comes from EU funding.

During the conference workshop on the Application of GHG models we will be doing exercises making use of data you can find here