Ecological Restoration 2006

The deadline for early bird registration and abstract submission of the Greifswald Conference on Ecological Restoration (22- 25 August 2006) has been postponed to 15 April 2006.

Almost 300 abstracts for presentations and posters have been submitted. Restoration of peatlands gets special attention in a session cluster hosted by the International Peat Society and the International Mire Conservation Group with already over 100 contributions. Don’t miss the chance to participate in this major restoration event.

For all information see:

http://www.uni-greifswald.de/SER2006

The conference excursions also pay special attention to peatlands. The post-conference excursion (26 – 31 August) to the peatlands of Poland (550 Euro by 20.04.06, 650 Euro after that date) is a week-trip to Poland, that will give you the opportunity to see almost all stages of development, management, degradation and restoration of Central European peatlands with on-the-spot discussions on the limits of human interference in peatlands and on the prospects for their future, especially in the context of wise use and needs of society.

The trip will bring you to the scattered bogs and fens in the hilly landscape of north-west Poland , where well-preserved mires neighbour degraded ones and restoration projects are ongoing. In the Noteć Valley you will see large areas of fens reclaimed for more than 200 years and used for intensive agriculture. What are the measures to minimise the environmental losses in such systems?

The next points of the trip are the pearls of Polish mires: the virgin fens of the Rospuda Valley and the best preserved semi-natural fens of the Biebrza Valley. Here important conservation questions are: why can some areas maintain high species biodiversity without any human interference, whereas other require high-cost vegetation management to prevent succession? How should this management be organised and implemented? What costs should the community pay to preserve such sites? Here we will also discuss hot conflicts between conservation priorities (species vs. naturalness) and the societal support for infrastructural development.

We continue the excursion passing through the reclaimed Wizna fen – one of the largest land reclamation projects in Poland during communist times. What is the fate of such systems, designed for large-scale collective farming, in contemporary Poland ? What are the effects of past drainage on biodiversity and agricultural use? What are the restoration prospects?

We conclude the excursion near Warsaw, the capital of Poland , where peatlands biodiversity suffers not only from past drainage and intensive use but also from the current pressure of the growing city. In Całowanie Fen, we will see the effects of restoration projects and discuss their ecological and economical feasibility.

Rospuda valley

The pre-conference excursion (17.-21. August 2006) New Nature in NE-Germany offers an exciting journey through (restored) nature flavoured with a dash of culture (550 Euro by 20.04.06, 650 Euro after that date). The excursion leads through Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, a very diverse landscape “sculptured” during the last ice-age, with ground and end moraines, sanders, and numerous lakes and valleys.

The diversity of poor and richer soils mixed with fens, bogs and lakes constitutes an exciting landscape with an enormous species-richness. The area is known for its low population density and its numerous large-scale restoration initiatives.

The main focus of the excursions will lay on the large-scaled wetland restoration projects but also other habitats such as woodlands and heaths will be subject of our explorations.

The excursion will lead from a 8,000 ha large abandoned training site of the Russian army where since the early 1990s spontaneous succession takes place, to the Müritz National Park, where in the Serrahn part oligotrophic and mesotrophic mires have been restored in the last two decades.

The next excursion points will be the Galenbecker Lake project, a EULIFE project aimed at stabilizing the hydrology of the lake and at restoring the adjacent fens, and the ‘Anklamer Stadtbruch’, a 1,500 ha large rewetted coastal flood mire, that before 1995 almost entirely consisted of intensively used degraded grasslands, degraded woodlands, alder and birch brooks and drained bog vegetation. Since a storm-induced flood in 1995, the developments have been dramatic and include the dying-off of 400 ha of woodland. Nowadays natural mire vegetation is re-establishing and bird-life is spectacular.

A main focus will be on the restoration project “Peene valley”, a large-scaled nature conservation project of over 20.000 ha in the valley-fen of the river Peene. In the period from 1992 until 2008 over 35 million Euro will be invested in the rewetting and the restorative management (by grazing and cutting) of the valley fen. The Peene valley fen is a very versatile wetland with percolating, flood, and spring mires. Here you will find the whole range of fen habitats from very natural small sedge reeds and calcareous fen-grasslands, degraded and rewetted grassland polders, to drained and rewetted alder brooks.

Subsequently we will visit the 310 ha large polder Randow-Rustow, rewetted in the framework of compensation measures for the newly build motorway A-20.

The rewetted polder Randow-Rustow

Two more EU-LIFE projects are on the programme, the “Trebel valley” (2.500 ha) and the “Recknitz valley” (550 ha), that both dealt with the restoration of the original river beds and with large-scale rewetting of strongly degraded valley fens.

Besides the restoration of the original course of the rivers Trebel and Recknitz, massive measures were taken to stabilize hydrological conditions. On the water divide between both river valleys we find a raised bog called ‘Grenztalmoor’ (427 ha). This bog suffered from long years of deep drainage of the surrounding fen-grasslands and was also rewetted in the course of the restoration projects.

River and wetland restoration in the cultural landscape of Northwest Germany and Denmark (25.-29. August 2006, € 450) is the other post-congress excursion.

The landscape in Northwest Germany and Denmark is shaped mainly by agriculture. Thus, river and wetland restoration always has to balance and respect the needs off all involved stakeholders. During this excursion we will show you examples off what is possible in river and wetland restoration. We hope to stimulate discussion (I) which restoration targets are achievable, (II) how the public can be involved in restoration and (III) what we can learn from transboundary co-operation.

The excursion starts with visiting the Ritzeraufarm, which has changed from conventional to organic farming practice. The conversion is monitored by an interdisciplinary research team from Kiel Ecology-Centre that studies the effects of organic farming on animals, plants, crop production, crop diseases, soils and economics.

Next we will study the results of adopt-a-brook-groups (“Bachpatenschaft”). About 1.000 citizens are active as “Bachpaten” in about 80 groups in Wandsbek, informing about nuisances, measuring water chemistry and biota, and actively restoring aquatic habitats. A special project is the restoration of the Wandse Beck to a typical trout brook amidst of the urban setting of the City of Hamburg.

The raised bog Nienwohlder Moor, the next excursion point, was severely affected by hand turf cutting in the first half of the 20th century. From the beginning of the 1980’s onwards, the peatland is rewetted by closing deep drainage ditches. The success of these measures is evaluated with a comparison of detailed vegetation mapping carried out in 2005 and 1985.

The Skjern is Denmark ’s largest river, draining over 10% of the mainland before discharging through the broad shallow Ringkobing Fjord to the North Sea. Less than 40 years ago the lower river catchment supported a rich mosaic of watercourses, lakes, ponds, reed beds, meadows, common grazing land and heath lands. In times of flood, an enormous lake was formed, interrupted only by boggy marshlands.

Between 1962 an 1968, the river was straightened, deepened and embanked, and gradually the wetlands, meadows and heath were turned into a 4,000ha, arable prairie. However, the gains for agriculture were not as easily sustained. As floodwater no longer flowed over land, and as fertiliser was liberally applied, the floodplain began to act as a huge ‘source’ of nutrients, and was no longer a ‘sink’ for sediments. This had a disastrous impact on the fjord as it became silted up and polluted. Problems also arose in the drainage area itself. The land shrunk as it dried out, and land levels dropped making drainage ineffective and water turned bright red due to ochre precipitation. In 1987, the Danish parliament decided to restore the River Skjern. In 2002 the restoration works were completed. The effects of the project on the quality of the fjord and the environments of the river and the floodplain are monitored with an exhaustive programme.

The restoration of the transboundary Frøslev-Jardelund Moor project was almost finished more than 15 years ago, but some smaller measures were recently carried out.

Also the “Pasture landscape Eider Valley”, south of the provincial capital Kiel, is being monitored extensively after low-intensity grazing was introduced and peatlands were rewetted in 1999. The research focuses both on flora and fauna as well as on nutrient dynamics, hydrology and socio-economical aspects.

The last excursion point discusses the options of river and wetland restoration in relation to the EU water framework directive and the implementation of the Natura 2000 habitat net work.

For more information on the excursions:

www.uni-greifswald.de/SER2006/excursions.html