Environmental Sciences, Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, Princetonlaan 8a, 3584 CB, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Aquatic Ecology and Environmental Biology, Radboud Institute for Biological and Environmental Sciences, Radboud University, Heyendaalseweg 135, 6525 AJ, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Ambio. 2023 Sep;52(9):1519-1528. doi: 10.1007/s13280-023-01875-8. Epub 2023 May 24.
Peatlands are among the world's most carbon-dense ecosystems and hotspots of carbon storage. Although peatland drainage causes strong carbon emissions, land subsidence, fires and biodiversity loss, drainage-based agriculture and forestry on peatland is still expanding on a global scale. To maintain and restore their vital carbon sequestration and storage function and to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement, rewetting and restoration of all drained and degraded peatlands is urgently required. However, socio-economic conditions and hydrological constraints hitherto prevent rewetting and restoration on large scale, which calls for rethinking landscape use. We here argue that creating integrated wetscapes (wet peatland landscapes), including nature preserve cores, buffer zones and paludiculture areas (for wet productive land use), will enable sustainable and complementary land-use functions on the landscape level. As such, transforming landscapes into wetscapes presents an inevitable, novel, ecologically and socio-economically sound alternative for drainage-based peatland use.
泥炭地是世界上碳密度最高的生态系统之一，也是碳储存的热点地区。尽管泥炭地排水会导致强烈的碳排放、地面沉降、火灾和生物多样性丧失，但基于排水的农业和林业在全球范围内仍在不断扩张。为了维持和恢复其重要的碳固存和储存功能，并实现《巴黎协定》的目标，所有排干和退化的泥炭地都急需重新湿地化和恢复。然而，社会经济条件和水文限制迄今为止阻止了大规模的湿地化和恢复，这需要重新思考景观利用。我们在这里认为，创建综合湿地景观（湿地泥炭地景观），包括自然保护区核心区、缓冲区和沼泽农业区（用于湿地生产性土地利用），将使景观层面上的可持续和互补的土地利用功能成为可能。因此，将景观转化为湿地景观是一种不可避免的、新颖的、生态和社会经济合理的替代排水型泥炭地利用的方案。
