COMPARISON OF PEATLAND HYDROLOGICAL MODELS

Abstract

Peatlands have a vital role in carbon sequestration and mitigation of global climate change. Peatlands in the boreal and sub-arctic regions store around 15–30% of global soil carbon. In the European Union the move towards the climate neutrality policy includes activities specifically aimed at the reduction of negative greenhouse gas emissions from peatlands through nature conservation and renewal. In Latvia the total area of peatlands is 645 100 ha. Due to industrial peat extraction and other processes a considerable proportion of peatlands in Latvia are degraded, thus leaving negative impact on both the local wildlife environment and on the global effort to tame the climate change. Areas in Latvia where peat extraction has ended or has been suspended without revitalisation activities in place amount to 18 010 ha. Given the conditions the restoration of degraded peatland environments is important and most often take place in the raised bogs calling for evidence-based decision making through deployment of hydrological models that are applicable for restoration of raised bogs in conditions of Latvia. The analysis of available hydrological models indicate that mathematical deterministic physically based models are applicable for the restoration activities of peatlands. The raised bog model deployed in Männikjärve bog holds the potential to be integrated within a virtual reality environment after further improvements, thus potentially improving decision and environmental policy making process for raised bog area restoration activities. Further work on tailored model for bog restoration considering the data acquisition challenges with input data fed through remote sensing capabilities is proposed.