peatlands 1 taitto.indd - International Peat Society

Continuation of
the Lower Saxonian
Mire Conservation
Programme
The Mire Conservation Programme
does not have any
limited duration and its aims
will also be valid in future.
However, the agricultural use
of the peatlands of Lower
Saxony has already overstepped
its peak. The areas are still used,
but, because of microbiological
decomposition, the fi elds are
literally run down. In future,
water-logged areas, bad drainage
and other problems will
make work for the farmers even
more diffi cult and/or force them to
abandon these fi elds.
In Lower Saxony, the peat industry
has at its deposal only the peat under
the fi elds and meadows in agricultural
use. Today, these peatlands, which have
often been in agricultural use for more
than 100 years, are, due to nutrient
accumulation and soil modifi cation, no
longer directly restorable into growing
mires, even if they were rewetted
properly.
Most of the agriculturally-used
former raised bogs have already transformed
to marginal revenue sites, on
which agriculture can not be carried
out effi ciently anymore. Therefore,
the industrial extraction of the peat
from these wet meadows can produce
restoration areas which, in the long
term, can be transformed to new mire
areas. The survey and documentation
of these “returned areas”, guidance
in their preparation and their fi nal
inspection will be one of the most
important tasks of mire conservation
in the future.
The regional development plan of
Lower Saxony designates preferred areas
for peat extraction. These resources
will be suffi cient until the middle
of the present century. Already today,
extraction permissions until 2030 and
further on have been issued.
One special project is the research
on how to cultivate Sphagnum mosses
to be used as fresh biomass instead of
white peat in horticultural substrates.
First trials to initiate the growth of
Sphagnum mosses on cut-over peat-
Restored area after peat extraction at Gnarrenburger Moor. Photo: Gerfried Caspers
lands have started and promise to be
successful. The use of fresh Sphagnum
mosses as an additive in horticultural
substrates has shown encouraging
results.
Mire Conservation
Programme also for Fens
The Mire Conservation Programme of
Lower Saxony originally covers only
raised bogs. However, only if fens are
also considered, will a complete mire
conservation programm be achieved.
Besides the raised bogs, fens are also
typical of the landscape of Lower
Saxony. Often both peatland types are
connected and appear as a spatial unit.
Compared with raised bogs, it has
turned out
that the
protection
and development
of
fens presents
a more
complex and
sophisticated
problem, not
least because
they are fully
under agricultural
use.
While raised
bogs, having
their own
water balance,
can be seen
seperately,
as islands in
the landscape, fens form an integrated
part of the surrounding areas. Their
effective conservation must therefore
extend the area of the fen itself and
also involve the surrounding landscape.
The great success of the mire
conservation in Lower Saxony shall encourage
all stakeholders to move on in
this direction and direct their attention
also to the conservation of the fens in
the Federal State. �
Gerfried Caspers
Eckhard Schmatzler
Landesamt für Bergbau, Energie
und Geologie
Hanover, Germany
e-mail: gerfried.caspers@
lbeg.niedersachsen.de
In former times, peat extraction was a hard work also in Lower Saxony.
Today, museums help to visualize how mires were used by the local
population in the past. Photo: Peat Museum in Neustadt
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