Barriers and Opportunities to Managing forest ditches for climate – Research, Up-scaling, & Legislation (BOM)

Peatland drainage for forestry has created ~1 million km of artificial waterways in Sweden, making it one of our largest human-induced environmental disturbances.

These extensive modifications have basically unknown, but potentially enormous legacy effects on the greenhouse gas balance, water resources and biodiversity.

Further, it is unclear whether peatland restoration or ditch-cleaning to maintain forest growth is the best strategy to avoid negative environmental outcomes in the future and what policy barriers exist for managing ditches in the best way.

To close the gap between science and management, we will use a unique combination of field research, up-scaled modelling and policy analysis to ask what the most effective approach is to avoid further degeneration of carbon stores, water resources and biodiversity.

We will leverage one of the most advanced field research infrastructures, the Krycklan Catchment Study (www.slu.se/Krycklan) in combination with fully replicated experimental catchments.

We will upscale to the national level by using new unique artificial intelligence (AI) methods and develop a decision support tool.

We will analyze barriers and limitations within the current policy framework to determine how best to implement findings from our research and upscaling efforts.

In doing so, we will provide much needed new knowledge about the barriers and opportunities of various management options for drained peatland forests..