Speaker: Laura Catalina Riaño Peña
Peatland Ecology Research Group, Université Laval, Québec, Canada
7 April 2026 15:00 EET 14:00 CET
The Teams link willl be sent to IPS members via Snippets/Peatlands International.
Peatland pools are bodies of water that support the establishment of specific diversity, as they harbour a few animal and plant species typical of such habitats. During ecological restoration, creating pools can improve environmental diversity. In the context of the loss of peatland ecosystems, the contribution to biodiversity improvement during ecological restoration is fundamental. The main objective of the project is to determine the environmental factors that favour the establishment of specific plant diversity in pools.
To do so, 21 ombrotrophic peatlands in the East of Canada (Quebec and New Brunswick) were inventoried, where natural pools (reference ecosystem), created pools (during ecological restoration), spontaneous pools and drainage ditches (considered as created pools), were characterized. Thus, field sampling of biotic (percent cover) and abiotic data (e.g., water pH, water electrical conductivity, pool perimeter, peat depth, among others) was conducted on restored peatland sites and their reference ecosystems.
These data allowed multivariate analyses to illustrate the similarity between each micro-habitat (created pools and spontaneous pools) in relation to their reference ecosystem (natural pools), and highlighted the importance of spontaneous pools, as they are the closest to the reference ecosystem, and they harbour the most species present in the three types of pools. Thus, the results suggest that spontaneous pools and flats (pool edges without slopes) have the potential to increase the ecological heterogeneity of restored bogs and the quality of the floristic habitat. This project will also provide guidelines for creating pools in restored bogs.
