An international team of peat bog researchers from Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Poland, with Prof. Wiktor Kotowski and Dr Łukasz Kozub from the Faculty of Biology, University of Warsaw (UW), compiled data from 563 European peat bogs.
Scientists collected field data on vegetation, hydrology and geochemistry, and mapped land cover characteristics using satellite imagery. They found that rehydrated peatlands differ significantly from nearby natural peatlands in terms of vegetation and other key ecosystem characteristics, such as peat physicochemical features and fluctuations in groundwater levels.
According to the scientists from the University of Warsaw, the results of the work of the international team published in Nature Communications show that in the case of peat bogs in the low temperate zone, typical of Poland, it is difficult to expect their quick return to the state before drainage.
