During Care-Peat, different restoration works are undertaken in 5 pilot sites through Nort-West Europe. One of the main goals of the project is to assess the effect of these actions on greenhouse gas (GHG, CO2 and CH4) fluxes.
An important factor for determining the fluxes is soil temperature: high temperatures generate high GHG production in soils and increases fluxes towards the atmosphere. To better understand how the restoration works will affect the soil temperature, a laboratory experiment was set up by students of the Orléans University.
There were different treatments chosen that mimic the works that will be applied in the field for the French pilot site La Guette: bare peat, bare peat with Sphagnum, control (no restoration). Although no firm conclusions could be drawn from this first experiment, it allowed the students to get in touch with scientific research works and to learn how to do science, in the framework of a European project.
Based on the experience acquired in 2020, the experiment will be repeated next year.