Multispectral satellite based monitoring of land cover change and associated fire reduction after large-scale peatland rewetting following the 2010 peat fires in Moscow Region (Russia)

Addressing Peatland Rewetting in Russian Federation Climate Reporting

“…These areas, supplemented by abandoned peatlands drained for agriculture and forestry became serious fire hazards [5]. Significant peat fires occurred in 1972, in 2002 and especially in 2010 [16], when, in addition to the economic damage, the combination of anomalous hot weather [40] and extreme smog [41] had catastrophic consequences for human health and life [42,43]. In response, the Government of the Russian Federation decided to combat ongoing and prevent future peat fires, and from the fall of 2010 until 2013 77 drained, fire-prone peatlands with an area of 73,049.84 hectares were rewetted (Figure 2).…”

“…70 million €), whereas planning was paid by the Moscow Region. In 2014, the responsibility for maintaining the new and reconstructed water management facilities was transferred to a special organization of Moscow Region [16].…”

“…Peatland restoration, for example, requires three times less nitrogen compared to storing a similar amount of carbon in mineral soils [11]. Restoring peatlands through rewetting may significantly reduce GHG emissions [13], even in the case of increased CH 4 emissions [14], reduce peat fires [15,16], and help restore biodiversity [17], hydrological [18] and other peatland ecosystem functions [19]. However, when summarizing the various mitigation options, IPCC [12] attributed only medium confidence to peatland restoration, likely due to a lack of scientifically validated data on the effectiveness of peatland rewetting.…”

“…The reported areas are probably predominantly milling sites and include all sites that IPCC [10,30,31] attributes to peat extraction, i.e., prepared (increasingly less due to the reduced opening of new deposits), under extraction, and abandoned after partial extraction without reclamation. Abandoned milling fields revegetate with difficultly and may stay bare for years, which makes them easily identifiable from satellite imagery [16,32].…”

“…In 2010-2013, more than 73,000 ha of fire-prone peatlands, i.e., a significant part of the peatlands in that region [37], were rewetted in the Moscow Region (Figure 1), which was at that time the most extensive peatland rewetting initiative in the Northern Hemisphere. Long-term monitoring showed that the main goal of rewetting, the reduction in the number and extent of peat fires, has been achieved [16]. However, it is also important to estimate the GHG emission changes resulting from rewetting.…”