Abstract:
tThe tracking of land use since 1990 presents a major challenge in greenhouse gas (GHG) reporting underthe United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol becausethere is often limited availability of data, especially for the base year of 1990. There is even less landmanagement and soil moisture data, which are needed to track climate change mitigation activities sincesoil moisture is one of the main drivers of GHG emissions of organic soils. Information is also needed for thereporting of land-based activities such as grazing land management or wetland drainage and rewetting oforganic soils. Different spatial and thematic resolutions of land-use data produce inconsistent time serieswith a strong overestimation of land-use change (LUC) if not adequately accounted for. Our aim was tocreate a consistent time series of land use since 1990 that is in line with GHG reporting under the UNFCCCand the Kyoto Protocol by combining official cadastral data with colour-infrared aerial photography usedfor biodiversity monitoring in six federal states in northern and eastern Germany. We developed a generichierarchical classification by land use, management and drainage status, and a translation key for dataharmonisation into a consistent time series. This time series enabled the quantification of LUC on organicsoils between 1992 and 2013 in a spatially explicit manner. Furthermore we used this time series todevelop indicators for changes in land management and drainage to evaluate the success of protectionstatuses on peatland restoration.The study area encompassed one million hectares, half of which had some type of legal nature pro-tection status. Areas with no protection status tended to become more intensively farmed and drier,while highly protected areas (e.g. Natura 2000) showed the opposite trend. Land-use trends also dif-fered greatly between federal states. In Schleswig-Holstein organic soils tended to become drier duringthe study period, while in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania they tended to become wetter overall. Thetrends and differences in LUC between federal states were linked to German reunification, changes in theEuropean Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and Germany’s Renewable Energy Act (EEG). A large-scalepeatland protection programme also had major impact.In conclusion, our study demonstrates how data derived for biodiversity monitoring and other highlydetailed land-use data can be used to track changes in land use, management and drainage status inaccordance with the reporting requirements under the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol.
